


RUNV.exe (Runner Under/Neon Vintage)

by nah_tho



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alcohol, BIRD MOM IS HERE, Bad Sex, Bathroom Sex, Bureaucracy, Cyberpunk, Drinking, Dystopian World, False Identity, Fantasy Racism, Fingering, I do what I want, M/M, Masturbation, References to Addiction, Urban Fantasy, also orc is ork in shadowrun lmao, brad is... basically still exactly the same, brad was a band nerd, corporate culture, eventual polyamory, i had to come up with so many department names and shit, i legally have to tell you i wrote this while listening to the deux ex soundtrack accidentally, krav learns to use a smartphone, kravitz is a corporate decker for the raven queen, look i do what i want, lots of magical technological bullshit, made up jargon, neonpunk, shadowrun jargon, the Shadowrun AU literally no one ever asked for, this is insane why did i write this, uhh the impact of being dead on a reaper's body i guess, welcome to gay bars fam sorry to break it to you but folks always fucking in bathrooms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2020-02-09 13:36:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 36,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18639166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nah_tho/pseuds/nah_tho
Summary: The rich get richer selling the poor artificial happiness. There are no countries, only corporations. No police, only private security. No citizenship without employment.Your coworker has a three hundred year work contact and your CEO is, quite literally, your god. You either work and are pious or work and are hunted, a shadowrunner, the necessary element on the side, able to do what baroque and inflexible corporate cultural norms do not allow the corporations to do. They hate you. They need you. They'll kill you if you fail them. They'll kill you if you betray them. They might just kill you if you succeed.C:/RUNV.exe/> RUNNING...Taako never did take to working for the Bureau very well. It's so easy to disappear.It's much harder to stay hidden.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao what the fuck is that summary/ me @ my own summary: felt cute might delete later
> 
> literally no one wanted this but you're getting it anyway
> 
> i'm going to get a bunch of shit wrong and make a bunch of shit up and never apologize if you want canonical feasibility go read my other series

 

The air was blue with arcane pollution.

Sparks of electromagic energy jumped through it, as if from wire to wire and trailing light behind them, before disappearing back into the fog.

The sun was going down behind the distant edge of the city skyline, so the neons had started to come up, the reds and blues and greens and yellows of the night market glowing through and haloed by the polluted mist of this disenfranchised district.

A rift formed in the blue air. Through it stepped a beautiful, ugly thing: a golem formed from the crystalline slag left behind by the cosmoscopic refining process and connected and controlled by tendons of arcane energy. He watched it manifest with idle curiosity, wondering what such an expensive investment was doing in such a shitty neighbourhood.

“Now then,” it said, accent almost cartoonishly thick. “Taako, is it? ‘Fraid you’ll have to come with me, and no funny business-”

 _Uh-oh. Whoops_ , thought Taako as he took off running, _that’s Taako cue to dip_.

He wasn’t sure which of the megacorps had decided to send a construct after him, but considering the fact that it was nine feet tall and thundering after him at a dead sprint, he wasn’t especially hyped to find out.

He slid over the hood of a half-stripped luxury autowagon and barely noticed the leg of his pants had caught on the rusted edge of a hole in it until he felt the air start to eat at the skin of his thigh through the tear. _Shit_ , he thought. He needed to get inside, and fast, before the corrosion did real and permanent damage.

Behind him, the golem stepped onto the hood of the auto, crushing it, and he had a thought: the arcane core would’ve been stripped the second someone knew they could get away with it, maybe even sooner, but old-style engines like that one tended to build up residue, so maybe-

All it took was an arcane spark to make the thing explode. A piece of crystal whizzed past his face, dangerously close. Overhead, the red ‘R’ in a nearby sign shorted out.

He took a moment to approach cautiously, ignoring the burning air seeping through the hole in his pantleg, curious to see what was left. Just rubble. Twisted metal. Chunks of stone, both from the street and the golem.

He picked one up to scrutinize it and felt it tugging out of his fingers, back towards the rest. When he listened, he could hear another piece rattling in the neon across the street, trying to return to its fellows.

 _Uh-oh_ , he thought again, and took off.

***

 _A magic user. Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic_.

With a low, unimpressed sigh, Kravitz toggled the reformation sequence for his golem again, massaging his forehead with fingers he was struggling to the keep fleshed.

Beside him on the desk lay an open dossier. In it was a picture of an elf, a promotional pamphlet for a television show called _Sizzle It Up With Taako!_ and a page of necessary information that was mostly blank.

This was going to be a bad case, he decided then. This one was going to give him all kinds of trouble.

“Coffee, Kravitz?” a co-worker asked from the door to his cube, rapping their knuckles against the inner wall of it as if they were knocking on a door.

“Please,” he sighed.

***

Seated on the edge of the bed in his capsule, Taako hissed in a breath through his teeth as his peeled back the fabric of his pants from his thigh. That extra twenty seconds of snooping to satisfy his curiosity had cost him.

Where the air outside had crept in through the hole in his pants was a wickedly blistered blue-black scab about the size of his thumb. It was oozing clear liquid at the edges. It stung and twitched in the way only wounds contaminated with magic could.

“Shit,” he muttered.

He didn’t have more than basic supplies, and healing was outside of his purview. He’d have to lay low, avoid making it worse, let this one heal naturally. It’d probably scar. Not to mention he had to patch his suit if he wanted to hide out in any of the more polluted areas of the city, and anti-arcane fabric went at a premium in the slums, where it was needed the most. He’d have to lean on old contacts, which was risky.

“Shit!” he said again, slapping his hand against the wall of his capsule. Someone shifted inside the one next to his, murmuring complaints.

He could faintly hear the tinny sound of their portable television through the supposedly soundproof polymer.

_“-Chuul scampi with Ascorean wine and cracked black pepper-”_

His live show in Daggerford, he identified immediately. This was one of his. His voice. His recipe.

So people were still watching his show, even after the controversy. _Huh. Okay._

He felt a little better, knowing that. It wasn’t a good thing, strictly speaking, since it meant he was still immediately identifiable to anyone with access to a television, but he still felt good about it, nonetheless.

***

Brad, eyebrows furrowed, tapped the surface of the employee file on his desk with a blunt fingernail before flipping it open.

He didn’t need to, strictly speaking. He already knew whose file this was.

Taako. Mononymic. Last names seemed to be going out of style these days, he mused.

Race: Elf.

Gender: Male.

Date of Birth: Withheld. Not that it really mattered for an elf, he thought, but it would be nice to know for recordkeeping purposes. And for sending birthday cards, which Brad did on behalf of his department. He didn’t have to. He just liked to.

HMHVV Exposure: No.

Solicited for conditional employment under the Artifact Reclamation department two years prior, alongside shadowrunning compatriots Magnus Burnsides and Merle Highchurch, after his participation in the neutralization of Artifact Isolation department defector Brian, identified after his defection operating under the alias ‘The Black Spider’.

Formally employed alongside his fellow former shadowrunners following successful completion of the Bureau’s collaborative-combat interview process, and granted full citizenship following neutralization of foreign agent ‘Jenkins’, responsible for the assassination of fellow reclaimer Leeman Kessler, as well as the successful reclamation of the artifact Kessler had been in pursuit of.

His team’s reclamation rate was exceptional, and with the exception of multiple interpersonal complaints filed against Taako by Leon, head of the Requisitions department, it all seemed to be pretty standard stuff with one notable exception.

One week prior, Taako had vanished.

When his file had landed on Brad’s desk, he’d forwarded it to the Defection branch. Two days later, he’d walked into his office to find it on his desk again.

Assuming that it had been his error, he’d forwarded it to the Medical branch to be cleared as an authorized leave of absence.

And here it was: back on his desk, unchanged.

 He flipped it closed and then open again as though he might’ve missed something, utterly at a loss. On his broad chest, his employee identification card caught the light: **Brad Bradson, Personal and Interpersonal Development, Branch Head**.

 _Is this supposed to go to Retraining, maybe? Or back to Reclamation?_ he thought, and paused.

This time, instead of just forwarding it as it was, he included a sticky note:

**“I don’t know what you expect PaID to do with an absentee. Please stop sending this to me. -BB”**

***

“You’re serious? You’re killing me, my man,” Taako protested.

Behind a shimmering pane of reinforced glass, Garfield shook his head. “No can do, I’m afraid! You want an anti-arcane patch, you pay for an anti-arcane patch,” he said, voice lilting behind his mirrored mask. “Normally I’d ask if you want to make a deal- a little bit for me, a little bit for you, you know- but without your buddies here, I really don’t know what you can offer me, Taako. Besides, you’ve been off the scene for a hot minute: your name really doesn’t carry the same cred it used to. Sor-ry!” He did not, in fact, look or sound sorry.

Taako swore quietly under his breath, and then louder, smacking his hand on the glass. “But-”

“Four hundred nuyen, Taako,” Garfield repeated, “take it or leave it.”

 _So much for leaning on old contacts,_ he thought sourly, fishing out his credstick. He’d have to resort to squatting until some work came his way. _Always the same old shit, huh._

***

“Not sure why I oughta tell you something unless you got something to give me,” the ork behind the counter said, her eyes flicking up and down the length of his golem. “With a ‘roke rig like that, I think you could stand to part with some creds.”

Kravitz sighed. This was exactly why he’d protested their having such conspicuous constructs as proxies. “Of course,” he said, momentarily forgetting his mandated affectation and then scrambling to recover it. “Twenty’ll do ya?” When she said nothing, he sighed again. “Fifty, then, or nuffin’.” At that, she gestured for him to do the transfer.

She eyed him curiously as he transferred her the money. “Yeah, I saw your elf. He was here two nights back,” she said, looking pleased with herself. “Caught himself a couple complaints from his neighbours, cleared out sometime before check-in. Didn’t see where he was goin’, though.”

Kravitz nodded. “That’s all? Nuffin’ else?”

She looked like she was going to say something and thought better of it. “Naw. Naw, nothing else.”

***

Squatting was exactly as pleasant as he remembered it being: not very.

This tenement was sealed against the mist, at least, which was better than nothing. It was also a chiphead slum, which wasn’t. The other rooms were rife with them, sprawled out in circles around jury-rigged cyberdecks like wire-riddled corpses, chipjack cables plugged into splitters plugged in splitters plugged into decks. People so fucked by society that they’d gotten addicted to being anyone else; people so addicted to being anyone else that they could only afford one BTL between six or seven or them at a time.

Just looking at them was unbelievably depressing. He’d seen a lot of fucked-up things in a lot of fucked-up places, but every time he stumbled across simsense abusers like these ones, he was tempted to say this was the worst place of all.

But the tenement was sealed, it was quiet, and no one here would narc on him to some low-level security goon looking to get his rocks off apprehending a disgraced celebrity, so it was good enough.

He sat and patched his suit in silence, hearing nothing but the shallow breathing of the chipheads in the next room and the occasional passing of an auto.

***

Brad frowned at the file on his desk.

Once again, he didn’t have to open it to know whose it was. He also didn’t have to open it to see that his sticky note had provoked someone into sending him an answering sticky note:

**“Sounds like a you problem, tusker. Your file, your problem.”**

Unsigned, of course. Upper management didn’t take especially well to staff throwing around slurs. If he really wanted to, he could probably run the handwriting against the samples he had on file- samples he had for fraud-prevention purposes but found himself using far more frequently for this exact reason- and schedule the culprit for sensitivity training, but it appeared that he had more pressing responsibilities.

“Alright, Taako,” he murmured as peeled the sticky note off the front of the file, barely even glancing at it as he tacked it alongside the myriad others on the wall, “where’d you go?”

***

There was a pop like a dying lightbulb, followed closely by a rising chorus of groaning and retching. _That’s Taako’s cue,_ Taako thought, shoving his patch kit and what little food he had left back in his bag.

 He hated that he’d learned to recognize the sound of people experiencing dumpshock by ear alone, but it was a useful skill: chipheads weren’t inherently dangerous, but being dumped out could provoke erratic behaviour, and he really didn’t want to have to hurt anybody if he didn’t have to.

Besides, he was due for grocery run. And better lodging, if he could manage it. Somewhere with a few less roommates, maybe.

He skirted the edge of the room, stepping carefully over a leg here, a torso there, and was out the door before anyone was present enough to register he’d been there at all.

***

He had to give him credit: this particular bounty was incredibly good at disappearing.

Everyone slipped up somewhere. It was usually related to money: having too much or too little tended to force people to take action.

Taako, for his part, might as well have died. Except he hadn’t, or the bounty would’ve been rescinded.

He was just nowhere. Not on any camera feeds or comms chatter. Not making trouble or getting caught up in it. Which was to say he was making Kravitz’ job very, very hard.

He stared vacantly at the feeds on his desktop, trying to find something their algorithms may have missed, knowing he wouldn’t, knowing he couldn’t turn his attention to anything else until he had.

A knock on the wall of his cube. It startled him enough that he nearly jostled his mug off of his desk with an elbow before swivelling his chair to see who it was.

Cynthia Cappmann, human- still mostly so, he assumed- and mostly unfamiliar, gave him a little wave. She was from a different department. He had no idea why she was there. “Hey Kravitz,” she greeted.

“Yes. Yes, uh, hello. Um, Cynthia,” he acknowledged. “What can I do for you?”

She snorted at his awkwardness. “It’s not what you can do for me- it’s what I can do for you. Spotted your mark down near the tenements in Southside while I was cleaning for Lana. New patch: left leg, mid-thigh. He must’ve been holed up in one of those deck-splitter chip jockey dens after picking up the AAP. He was heading West on Fifth last I saw him.”

If he’d been a more exuberant and social man, he might’ve done something inappropriate, like hug her. Instead, he just raised his hands to her like he was praying to their goddess. “Thank you. Thank you, you are absolutely saving my life right now-”

Cynthia laughed at him as she stepped back from the opening to his cube. “Oh, cute. Be cuter if it was from someone who wasn’t dead, though,” she called over her shoulder.

***

 He kept his head low and his stride casual; no need to draw unnecessary attention. His suit wasn’t anything flashy, but he’d patched it more than once, and without enough skill and money to make sure an anti-arcane patch melded seamlessly into a suit, patch patterns had a bad habit of turning into identifying marks.

The mask shielded his face. The mismatched square of greyish fabric on his leg exposed it again.

 _Cool it,_ he told himself, pretending to pause and read a faded menu in the window of a run-down restaurant when a pair of on-duty security goons in power rigs rumbled past on the sidewalk. _Keep it chilly, my man. Real chilly._

When they turned the corner, he started to relax, but only for a moment.

This time, he heard it: the crackling blue air tore audibly as a rift opened behind him. He turned in time to see the golem step through it.

“Seriously?” he shrieked, frustrated, and took off down the street. He heard the goons notice: they were the type to assume anyone who was running was running from them. The siren went on. Distantly, he thought he heard a thick, almost cartoonishly-accented British voice call his name.

He sprinted and then did a hard turn into an alley, knowing momentum would run him into the wall and knowing it would be worth it if only because the security rigs didn’t handle as tightly as someone on foot. He felt his shoulder bruise beneath his suit as he slammed it into faded and crumbling red brick.

He prayed for a fire escape and got one, jumping, catching, and scrambling up the bottom of a raised iron ladder as the rigs overshot, passing the alley entirely.

He was hauling himself up onto the fire escape platform when he heard the rift opening again. He whipped his head up to look.

“Oh, come on,” he complained, scrambling to his feet. “I know you’re thirsty for it, but Jesus-”

“There you are,” that voice said again, faintly tinny through the proxy, and grabbed at him with a huge crystalline fist.

He squawked and dodged, slamming his back into the railing and deciding, split-second, to climb up on it and grab for the platform above.

He jumped; the golem grabbed. Its grip was unexpectedly warm around his ankle.

“Has anyone told you,” he shrieked, kicking it in the face with his free foot as it pulled at him, clinging to the balusters of the railing above and flailing, desperate not to be yanked back down, “you’re clingy as hell, my guy?”

“Now come quietly,” it said firmly, unperturbed, “I don’t want to have to hurt-”

He wasn’t sure what it was: maybe his foot landed just so, or maybe something interrupted the decker’s connection to the proxy, but there was a fraction of a second where its hand loosened, and that was all Taako needed.

He ripped his foot free, planted both on the railing, and hauled himself and over the railing above. Through the ironwork platform, he could see the golem looking up at him. He flipped it off and took off running, clattering up rusted iron stairs.

On the ground below, he could hear the security rigs finally manoeuvring their way into the alley.

The fire escape shook and groaned as the golem pursued him, quicker than he liked or expected, and he saw, in a moment of weird, horrible clarity, that the bolts holding it to the brick were starting to come loose.

He jumped for the edge of the roof even before the stairs detached completely, knowing it was coming, and right to expect it. They fell like an elderly man on a slick of ice: strangely slowly and inexorably, pounding into the wall of the building across the alley before falling on the rigs below. The golem was still looking up at him from the wreckage as he looked over the edge, catching his breath.

“Now hold on- you’re not going-” it called, falteringly English as it struggled to extricate itself, and then, in a bizarrely different and infinitely more exasperated voice, said, “Please, for the love of god, I’m just trying to do my job-”

 _Huh,_ Taako thought, and slipped away on the rooftop, anxious to be gone before another rift appeared. _How about that_.

***

There was an ork woman manning the front desk of the capsule hotel Taako had last been spotted at. Her name was Henryka and she was insistent they had met before.

“You’re sure we don’t know each other?” she asked again, leaning across the counter with a toothy smile. “I could swear I’ve seen that face before- handsome ork like you, I think I’d remember, huh?”

Brad was starting to wonder if he really had met her and had just forgotten. It wasn’t like him to forget a face. “I’m sorry, miss,” he said again, “I’m trying but, uh… yeah, I’m drawing a blank.”

She looked faintly amused. He wasn’t sure why. “Well, anyhow, what can I do for you, handsome?”

“It’s Brad,” he corrected amiably, “I’m looking for this elf. Have you seen him?”

She looked at the picture and then back at him, sweeping her eyes up him a way that suddenly made him suspect he’d failed to intuit her intentions in insisting they knew one another. “Yeah,” she said, “I’ve seen him. Came in on Tuesday with a hole about this big in his AA suit.” She gestured, holding her thumb and forefinger apart to demonstrate. “Left the next morning, before check-in. Went to get some AAP, probably. Never came back.”

Brad hummed, noting that down. “You think he went to get an anti-arcane patch?” he asked, and she nodded. “Where do you buy something like that around here?”

She gave him another long look, shifted her jaw back and forth like she was deciding whether or not to say, and then shot him another narrow smile. “Probably Garfield’s. There’s the Asphalt Girls and the Anarchobots, but Garfield gets you pretty much anything if you’ve got the creds.”

***

It felt good to lie on a bed that didn’t have a roof and walls of its own.

The apartment wasn’t luxurious, but it was empty, and that was a hell of a lot. He had food and privacy and his suit was fixed. Things were looking up.

Sure, the mail that had been pushed through the doorslot had piled up to a degree that made him suspect the previous tenant had been geeked, which wasn’t great, but it also meant no one was going to come strolling in while he was sleeping, which was.

He just had to be quiet. Play it cool. He knew Lucretia had eyes out for him. She’d find him eventually, send someone, and he’d move on again. The golem was a bigger issue.

 _Cool it_ , he told himself again, padding into the kitchen to check out the contents of the fridge.

There was a full crisper drawer of rotting NatVat mushrooms.

 _Definitely geeked_ , he thought. _Damn._

***

Kravitz stared at the form he had pulled up on his flickering monitor with the slow sinking feeling of someone who was beginning to realize his options were less robust than he’d hoped.

**Form 216A: Clearance Application For Direct Engagement With The Subject Of A Bounty Or Summons**

The second Taako saw his proxy, he ran, and he was quick, light on his feet. Kravitz’ proxy was not light on its feet. It was big and it was highly visible and it didn’t fit into the little spaces Taako liked to peel off into. It stood to reason that the best solution was a lighter, more mobile pursuer.

But something was missing from this form: the option to have that pursuer be anyone but the decker who piloted the proxy.

He’d have to go himself.

With a heavy sigh and a lot of reluctance, he submitted the form.

Within minutes, the application came back.

Approved. _Of course. Why wouldn’t it be._

“I guess this is what we’re doing,” he mumbled, fishing his keys out of his desk drawer.

In a slim case next to his desk hung two things: a vicious-looking scythe and a long black robe.

He took both.

***

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> C:/shadowrunfacts.exe/ 
> 
> > megacorps/corps: megacorporations, functionally nations, legit have their own citizens  
> > nuyen: the currency of shadowrun.  
> > credits/credstick: digitally transferable money, essentially shadowrun debit  
> > ork: yeah for some fucking reason orc is ork in shadowrun idk fam  
> > roke: baroque, excessive  
> > simsense: an artificial reality system allowing people to immerse themselves in another person's emotions and experiences, basically, amongst other things  
> > chipheads: people who are addicted to simsense chips with the emotional limiters either removed or widened, causing a more intense experience  
> > dumpshock: what happens when you're dumped out of a simsense interface; nausea, disorientation  
> > deck/cyberdeck: the interface deckers use to access a simsense interface  
> > datajack/chipjack: ports in people's heads they use with the cyberdeck  
> > tusker: slur for ork  
> > geeked: killed, murdered
> 
> i think that's it
> 
> don't @ me i have no fucking idea what i'm doing tbh


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> these poor boys are just trying to do their fucking jobs, taako

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> call me nah "two-speed" tho because i either update a day later or six months from now and you'll never be able to guess which it's gonna be
> 
> also i'm making shit up whole cloth now and i refuse to clarify what and where, play shadowrun and maybe you'll find out

“I might know that, sure. But what can you,” Garfield asked him, “offer me, hmm?”

He should’ve expected this. It shouldn’t have caught him off-guard. Somehow, it still did.

“Uh,” Brad said, “what do you want?”

Garfield laughed and raised an eyebrow, or at least Brad thought he did. He was chromed in a way that made it hard to make sense of what his face was doing. Called on to describe him, Brad would’ve found himself utterly at a loss. “I want a lot of things… Brad,” he said slyly, and maybe-smiled at the reaction that got him. “Oh yes, I know who you are, Mister ‘Personal Development’ rep for the Bureau. It’s my business,” he said, “to know other people’s business.”

“Uh, ‘Personal and Interpersonal Development’,” Brad corrected automatically. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Garfield. I do have access to Bureau resources I might be able to offer-”

“Hmm… no, I think I want some of your hair,” Garfield interrupted. “That’s my price.”

For a few long moments, Brad was dumbstruck. “…My hair?” he asked, flummoxed, reaching up absentmindedly to touch his ponytail with a gloved hand before remembering it was safely encased under his helmet.

“Yeah,” Garfield confirmed. “You’ve spend twenty-five years on that bad boy, now haven’t you, Brad? Su-rely you can spare a couple. Just one or two. Nothing huge, your friend Garfield isn’t unreasonable, you know.” He might’ve winked. His voice sounded like he was winking. “I mean, if you need this info so bad. If not, by all means, feel free to refuse.”

Brad let out a long, noisy sigh. “I, uh- I guess I am due for a trim,” he said unhappily. _Might as well make the best of it._ It did not occur to him to wonder what Garfield wanted with his hair.

***

Taako clicked his tongue against his teeth, surveying his work. _Not too bad for a high-class squat,_ he decided.

Cleared of garbage and rotten food, the kitchen was starting to feel serviceable. Sure, the appliances were outdated and the last tenant- _rest in peace and sorry you’re dead but thanks for the pad, homie_ \- didn’t seem to understand the concept of a knife-sharpener despite having a perfectly good one still in its original packaging, but it’d do.

He was starting to feel a little more upbeat.

***

Kravitz stared at the update alert on his comm, barely even registering that he’d let his skin melt away. The tips of his finger bones made a sharp _tick-tick-tick_ sound as he tapped them restlessly against the cracked and faded casing.

 _This doesn’t make sense_.

The flickering blue light of the screen washed over the exposed bone beneath his hood as he read and reread the alert.

_This makes no sense._

It was short, just a burst alert.

**ATTN: KRAVITZ**

**BOUNTY [DESIGNATION: TAAKO] TO BE APPREHENDED ALIVE. LETHAL FORCE NO LONGER AUTHORIZED.**

Taako had nineteen noted but unregistered deaths on his file. That was a lot of unsettled deaths owing. Accounting was losing their minds, which was why they’d shunted this case over to his desk the second it had come in; he was the most senior member of the Revenant, Undead, and Necromancer Retrieval department not currently occupied with investigating the lich sightings in the Phandalin barrens, which meant Taako was his problem.

Taako was his problem because nineteen unsettled deaths owing was way over the limit for regular astral processing, let alone live capture protocol. Anything over ten automatically qualified as necrotodefection, which was grounds for incarceration in the Eternal Stockade.

“What is going on?” he muttered, and then realized he’d gone calcic when he heard his own voice, thin and arcane without a tongue or lips. He glanced down the alley for curious onlookers, focusing on returning to an organic state before anyone spotted him.

The last thing he needed was some superstitious local running around telling everyone he’d seen Death- or worse, some gossipy suit spreading the word that Death had a comms unit from over fifteen years ago.

That would definitely get back to the Queen, and she knew him. Personally.

Well enough that if she caught wind that he’d avoided updating one piece of his hardware for so long, that meant the whole rig was just as old, and after they finally finished tearing out everything in his cube and installing the current systems, he’d have to find a way to install the system version he was familiar with without anyone noticing or spend the rest of year relearning how to do his job with new equipment.

In his hand, the alert flickered on his screen, and then updated.

He was letting himself get distracted.

**ATTN: KRAVITZ**

**CONFIRM FILE ADJUSTMENT FOR BOUNTY [DESIGNATION: TAAKO] TO LIVE CAPTURE PROTOCOL. AUTH: RQDS-1**

_Straight from the Raven Queen’s first designated speaker._

“Well,” he muttered wryly, feeling out the words, making sure everything was where it was supposed to be, “that answers that.”

 _If nothing else_.

***

When he realized what he was doing, he forced himself to stop fidgeting and scrubbing and just let the water pour over him. He let himself feel it: the spray on his scalp, his shoulders, his back; the rivulets running down his arms and chest, dripping off of his fingertips onto the tiled floor of the shower.

  _Taako found a good spot_ , he told himself, focusing on his breathing. _I’m in a good spot_.

He hadn’t really had a chance to stop yet. The first few days after leaving, Merle and Magnus had been on his ass, one minute trying to convince him to let them come with him, the next trying to convince him to change his mind. They’d been together too long, shared too many secret squats, too many acquaintances.

It had taken him nearly a week to shake them.

 _I don’t get it_ , he thought, as the knowing of it, both so immediate and so alien, crept back. _I don’t get it. It’s too much. I don’t get it how they’re okay with it_.

He needed to be alone, but now that he finally was, he found himself blanking out, staring down at nothing as he absentmindedly probed the scab on his thigh, pressing into the blue-black surface of it despite knowing better.

 _Do I know better?_ he thought suddenly, paralyzed by the thought. _What do I know? How do I know this is everything I didn’t know? What if there’s more?_

It wasn’t funny, but he started laughing anyway, in big, shrieking gasps. He tried to muffle them in his hand, lost his balance, and fell, painfully hard, into a sitting position. The naked skin of his ass hit the floor with a wet slap.

It wasn’t funny at all.

He just couldn’t seem to stop laughing.

***

Brad eyed the door dubiously. He checked his notes again.

 _Did Garfield rip me off?_ he wondered idly, more than a little perturbed by the thought. He’d sacrificed almost six inches of perfectly good hair for nothing but an address, an apartment number, and what might’ve been a wink.

He’d known it was a gamble. He hadn’t realized how unprepared he’d been for it to be a gamble he might lose.

 _Here goes nothing_ , he thought, raised his gloved hand to knock, and then paused.

Inside, someone- or something- was moving.

He could hear footsteps, quick but careless. Someone small, he decided. The stride was short, and each step landed without much impact. Someone small and light, then, or at least light-footed.

All at once, he realized what he was doing and straightened up, feeling ridiculous. His knock seemed irresponsibly loud in the quiet apartment building.

The footsteps stopped. Moments stretched into seconds as no one answered.

“Taako?” he called, and the footsteps on the other side of the door picked up again; fast now, hurried. “Hello? I just need to ask you some questions.”

They faltered again, slowing and then stopping.

There was a long beat of silence.

_“Uh, sorry, but… who the fuck are you and why should I care, exactly?”_

High and lilting. Definitely elven, from what he could tell. “I’m here from the Bureau-” he started to say, and then Taako- or the person he assumed was Taako, at least- interrupted him with a sharp laugh.

_“O-kay, yuh-huh. Tell Lucretia she can go fuck herself for me, homie, that’s me out-”_

The footsteps had started up again, and now they were moving away.

“What?” he asked, momentarily puzzled, and then, “Oh. No, um- I’m not here from the Director. I just need to account for your absence so I can remove you from active rotation.”

There was no tapering off, no meandering, not this time: the person on the other side of the door stopped dead at that.

There was a beat of silence. And another.

The footsteps beelined towards the door with a speed that prompted him to step back, suddenly nervous about the possibility that he was about to find himself face to face with a firearm. It wasn’t a risk he’d thought to consider.

The knob turned and the door pulled back from the frame with a creak and a shudder, but not by much: just enough for a sliver of elven face to peer out at him, eyebrows furrowed.

“You’re from the Bureau?” Taako asked him.

“Yes,” he confirmed. “Can I-”

“And Lucretia didn’t send you?” Taako interrupted.

“No,” he refuted. “Is it possible-”

Without warning, the door shut again. He could hear pacing on the other side.

“Can I come in?” Brad ventured, a little nonplussed.

The door flew open again, this time all the way, and with enough force to slam into the interior wall of the front hall. “Okay, my guy- if you’re just some fucking schlub from Accounting, how the hell did you find me?” Taako demanded.

“I- what? I’m not from the Accounting department,” Brad said, “I-”

“Garfield.” Taako interrupted again, suddenly seething, and went to slam the door again.

Brad had to lunge forward to get himself between the door and the frame. The doorknob slammed into his thigh with an uncomfortable amount of force. Taako shoved at the door, fixing him with a furious stare.

 _His photo really doesn’t do him justice,_ Brad thought, inexplicably.

“What?” Taako snapped, flashing trid-star white teeth as he snarled up at him. “Uhh, can I help you, my man?”

“It would help me a lot if you did,” Brad answered, using some of his considerable weight to push back against Taako’s efforts to close the door with him still in it, but trying not to push too hard and shove him into the wall. “I just need you to answer a few questions-”

“Are you gonna tell Lucretia where I am?” He was starting to sound winded, but his eyes were still bright and furious.

Brad had the brief, fleeting thought that they were actually quite beautiful, even like this. _That’s a little inappropriate, Brad,_ he thought after, making a mental note to address the issue later.

“No,” he assured him, realizing just a second too late that he’d been distracted for just a second too long as Taako started to really bear against the door with all of his weight. “Why would I tell the Director that? That’s not my job- technically, this isn’t even my job-”

Taako made a sound like a cornered animal and sprang back from the door, visibly winded, hands on his knees. In the same moment, suddenly finding himself braced against nothing, Brad stumbled through it and nearly crashed into him.

When he looked up, Brad could see the opaque surface of his AA mask reflected in the dark pools of Taako’s pupils. “You’re pretty big, huh?” he panted.

“Yeah. I guess so,” Brad said, mostly because he wasn’t sure how else to respond to that. “Are you okay?”

Taako waved a hand dismissively and then straightened up with a groan, tidying his hair with an ease that seemed practiced. “Yeah. Yeah, Taako’s good.” Brad felt his gaze as Taako openly appraised him. “Fuck, you’re big as hell, homie. What’re you doing in admin?”

“I just have a knack for it, I guess,” Brad said, which was true. For a moment, as he watched Taako catch his breath, working elegant hands through his hair, he considered removing his helmet, then thought better of it.

It was unusual of him to feel self-conscious, but the fact of the matter was this: Taako was not only an elf- itself a risk factor when it came to forming a balanced work dynamic, and one he had to contend with regularly- but an elf whose elfish characteristics were unusually obvious in their expression.

If he hadn’t known for a fact that Taako worked in AR, he would’ve assumed he was a trid-star. He had the kind of striking, distinctive beauty that elicited in Brad a weird and deeply disconcerting fascination, a desire to touch he had only ever experienced as a child.

For the sake of comfort for both parties, it was better to leave the mask on, he decided.

***

Kravitz watched the apartment building from the neighbouring rooftop with a growing sense of unease.

 _Who are you?_ he thought. _Why are you the exception?_ It was a fruitless line of questioning, one that wouldn’t yield answers except from the subject himself, but he still found himself returning to it again and again.

 _Ah_. Someone was leaving. Not Taako. The same tall, broad-shouldered individual he’d seen going in earlier that afternoon.

No sign of Taako, yet.

He knew this was the building his camera feeds had caught him sneaking into, but after hours without anything to confirm that, a nagging, irrational fear that he was in the wrong place, or that Taako had somehow both come and gone without him knowing, had started to grow in the back of his mind.

 _It’s here_ , he reassured himself. _He’s here_.

A group of go-gangers rumbled by on the street below, stacked two to a bike. Someone started yelling a block or two over, loud enough to hear but too far to make out the words. The fifth fight of the day, he noted.

A window opened on the second floor of the apartment building. A man came into view. He was holding a lit cigarette. He took a deep drag from it before blowing smoke through the anti-arcane filament.

Not Taako. Kravitz settled back, realizing he’d been leaning over the edge of the rooftop to get a better look.

He couldn’t just start jumping into apartments at random: it’d be a PR nightmare. People were already suspicious enough of them.

 _What if he’s not here?_ he thought again, and quashed it. _He’s here_. He just had to be patient.

An auto careened by on an adjacent street, going far beyond the speed limit, and a slew of security vehicles peeled after it, sirens blaring. He only glanced away for a moment.

A moment was too long. He nearly missed it.

 _There_ , he thought, exhilarated. A window was open on the fourth floor. A small, AA suit-clad person slipped through it, through the filament and over, onto the fire escape. There was a new patch on their left thigh: fresh light grey fabric against the weathered dark gray backdrop of their suit. _There_ , and then, _of course. He doesn’t have the keys for the door._

He watched, careful not to tip his hand too early. _No bags_. He’d left his things in the apartment. He’d be coming back.

_Fantastic._

Finally, things were looking up.

***

Taako was bemused, to say the least.

 _Built like a samurai, nothing but a pencil-pushing suit,_ he thought idly, picking through the wallets he’d lifted while he was out. He scrutinized a credstick and then tossed it over his shoulder onto the sidewalk behind him. _Deffo a screamer. You’ll get me next time, my guy_.

When the suit had shown up at his door, he’d been sure he was muscle. Admin types weren’t all stoop-shouldered, soft-muscled mooks by any means, but they sure as hell weren’t usually filling the widths of seven-foot doorframes with just their shoulders.

He jumped and snagged the lowest rung of the ladder leading to the fire escape, dropping an emptied-out wallet onto the ground below before hauling himself up. _Never got his handle_ , he realized suddenly, _never took off his mask, either_. Taako had spent the whole of that conversation- mostly lies, and not the kind that would stand up to scrutiny- staring at his own distorted reflection in the smooth curved surface of the suit’s AA mask. _Nice voice, though. Sexy, a little bit. Maybe it’s a good thing homeboy didn’t ruin it with whatever nerd shit he’s got going on behind the goggles and respirator._

He puttered up the stairs still dwelling on that, tossing another spent wallet over the edge as he transferred the credits from the credstick he’d found in it to his own. He was wondering whether or not he should’ve taken a second to assess the ass situation as the suit was on his way out when he opened the window to his squat and slipped in.

He took one step, two, and then stopped.

It was immediately evident that something was off. Things had been moved. Bags had been opened.

“Looks like I’ve got you this time,” a heavily-accented voice said from behind him, “Taako.”

He didn’t bother turning; he just dropped what he was holding and bolted for the door.

And into the door.

A sizzle of arcane energy when he pulled on it. The doorknob turned uselessly in his hands. “Shit!” he shrieked. He heard the window he’d entered in through sliding closed behind him and bolted into an adjacent room.

The window latch turned but the window itself barely budged. He could see more of that same purple energy oozing between the window and the frame.

“Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be,” the golem said again, audibly closer, and Taako froze.

 _Wait_.

He couldn’t hear the golem moving. He should’ve been able to hear it. It was nine feet of artificial slag. It had to weigh well over a tonne. The floor should’ve been shaking.

“There we are. There’s a good lad, come quiet now-” it said again, even closer, and he noticed something else: the echo was gone. The tinny, low-resonance quality to its voice was gone.

He turned around slowly, both anxious and morbidly fascinated.

“Hot damn,” he said first, and then, “oh, damn,” with considerably less enthusiasm.

The first was because it was not a golem that was approaching him, but a man. A human man. A tall one, with rich, dark skin and angular but handsome features, dressed in a sharply-tailored black suit.

The second was because, over this very handsome suit, this very handsome man was also wearing a hooded black cloak, and in one of his hands he held a scythe. That same purple arcane energy crackled along its viciously sharp-looking curved blade.

Taako knew what that meant.

“Shit,” he muttered, “I never do meet a cute guy who isn’t trying to kill me, huh?”

He meant it mostly as a joke, as one last little bit of levity between him and his living flesh before they were separated forever, but it genuinely did seem to catch the reaper off-guard.

“What?” he said, seeming to momentarily forget that he was supposed to have an accent, and then, “I have questions for you, lad.”

He had, for the moment, ceased his approach. This was not lost on Taako.

Taako grinned at him, back pressed up against the window, using the delay to try and feel out the shape of the arcane energy sealing it to the frame. “You really can’t keep that thing consistent, can you, bubbeleh?” he asked. He felt what might have been a fault, but the magic shuddered but didn’t give.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” the reaper answered, accent drifting out of the streets of London and into a posher upbringing. “Now then: who exactly are you?”

Taako squinted. “Uh, I’m… Taako? You’ve been calling me by name this whole time, my man,” he pointed out. “Now you.”

The reaper blinked. “What?”

“Now you,” Taako repeated, jiggling the window with the hand he had tucked behind his back. Looser, but still with very little give. “What’s your name, homie?”

He seemed to hesitate a moment, eying Taako suspiciously. “Kravitz,” he said finally. “Emissary of the Raven Queen. But you know that.”

“Well, Kravitz,” Taako said flirtatiously, feeling the window give a little more, “we have really got to stop meeting like this, huh? What happened to the first and second date? Because this is third date material, here-”

The reaper, Kravitz, looked incredibly thrown off by that. “What? What, no,” he said again, and then, “I’m not here to date you, I’m here to kill you- or at least I was, I was supposed to kill you but now-” Taako saw the moment he realized he’d dropped the accent again. “Now you look here, Taako-”

“Just give it up, Krav,” Taako interrupted, grinning, “I don’t know what the whole across-the-pond bit is about, but cha boy’s got ears and he knows you’re not it.” He’d almost gotten the window open. He probably could’ve forced it and bolted then If he’d needed to. It was the thrill-seeking, self-destructive bit of him that kept him rooted to the spot, acting as though he was still trapped.

That earned him an expression complete with wrinkled nose. Kravitz worked his jaw for a moment, like he was chewing. “Fine,” he said after a moment. “Fine, okay.” There was a beat. “I have questions for you.”

“You and everybody else today, seems like,” Taako said glibly. “Well, you have me at, uh, kind of a disadvantage, Krav, so hit me. What can Taako do for you?”

Kravitz’ eyes narrowed. “I know you’ve been trying to break the ward on that window,” he said. Taako felt the magic in the window frame tightening again, trying to pull the window flush again with an almost magnetic irresistibility. For a moment, he almost sounded like he had slipped back into the accent just out of habit. “Your file,” he continued, “um, my file on you says that you have died nineteen times.”

Each time rose in his mind, half of them immediate yet impossibly old, half too recent to bear. “Yeah? You’d think I wouldn’t forget a thing like that, huh?” he lied.

“Yes,” Kravitz answered, eyes intent, and then, “Um, no. No, I don’t think you would.” It was fascinating, the way he talked: so decisively, but always with this strange habit of self-editing, like he wasn’t quite used to holding conversations, somehow. “And I think you also know why I’ve been told to- no, why I have to bring you in alive.”

It was clearly a play for information, and a clumsy one at that, but it caught Taako so off-guard that he never had a chance to disguise the fact that it had surprised him. “Uh, what? That’s news to me,” he admitted.

Kravitz had caught his reaction, if his look of dismay was to be believed. “You mean you don’t?” he asked. “How can you not know? That doesn’t make any sense,” he added, pulling a comms unit out of his pocket and muttering to it.

Taako peered at him curiously. He hesitated for a moment, and then pulled his hand away from the window, letting it snap shut again. Kravitz looked over at him. “You ever wonder how much your boss is keeping from you, my guy?” he asked, faux-casually. “You ever wonder why they keep shit from you?”

Kravitz’ eyes flickered from Taako’s face to his comm and back again. His nose wrinkled as his brows furrowed. There was a long moment where Taako couldn’t hear anything but the traffic outside and his own heartbeat.

“Stay here,” Kravitz said finally, gesturing to the ground decisively. “If you run from me again, I will find you, and I will personally bring you to the Stockade.” His cool look sent a shiver down Taako’s spine. He watched a rift open in the air, vaguely admiring that Kravitz had managed to pull off a cool closer, at least, after such a rocky start.

And then Kravitz ruined it by hesitating, looking over again, and repeating,

“Stay here,”

like a stern dog owner nervous about coming home to a mess on the carpet.

Taako was still laughing long after the rift had closed and the arcane energy had faded from the windows and door.

***

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> C:/shadowrunfacts.exe/
> 
> > trid/trideo: three-dimensional video, Movies But Now They're In The Future basically idk  
> > chrome: cybernetic implants that are immediately obvious and visible  
> > suit: a regular ol' 9 to 5er, i feel like this one is obvious but i guess it's technicaly sr fax  
> > comm: fantasypunk cellphones basically??? lmao shadowrun is so fucking old fam, its future cellphones are like basically blackberries  
> > go-gang: gangs using vehicles; motorcycles, cars, etc.  
> > samurai: okay sr falls into that very stupid genre of tabletop that emerged during the obsession with japanese culture and it fucking shows okay. street samurai. a thing in sr  
> > screamer: credstick that triggers alarms if you try to use it
> 
> it's been two chapters and nobody's sucked a dick, who the fuck even am i


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plot thickens. Decisions are made. They're mostly impulsive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7olh8wH_bC4

It was only the next morning that Brad found himself sitting with his face cradled in his hands, wondering what he’d done to deserve this.

While he was a little too trusting to question it while it was being given to him, he was, mercifully, still smart enough to run the details of Taako’s story against his records before submitting his file to Medical again.

Pressed, it fell to pieces.

There was no Grandpa Tostaada on file, nor was Taako’s aunt registered anywhere in their system or in the systems of any of their allies or affiliates, nor even in the data stolen from their enemies.

On some level, he suspected he’d already known Taako had been lying to him. He’d just wanted this whole ordeal to be over, to go back to his desk and go about his work as normal, without worrying about toxic air or hair-collecting black market vendors or beautiful renegade elves who somehow weren’t on authorized leave but also weren’t defectors.

He’d wanted to finish his day, go home and check on how his mash was developing, check on his stills, and jerk off to a favourite trid before bed, just like anyone else. He’d wanted to while away his week, go to the cookout on Saturday and see if he couldn’t meet a few new faces, maybe finally meet someone who wasn’t made too nervous by the reputation for stupidity and brutality orks had in these parts to take a chance on him. It had been worth a shot, he’d thought. Shots not taken were shots missed and all that jazz.

But no: there was still a file on his desk, and he didn’t have to open it to know whose it was.

He sighed.

 _Maybe he’s still in the same spot_ , he thought grimly, trying to be optimistic. _That’s possible, right?_

“Yeah,” he muttered, reluctantly pulling his AA suit back on, “maybe.”

***

Kravitz hesitated with his fingers over the Data Support button, considering his options.

It was possible his outdated equipment had finally given out in a way he couldn’t identify or fix.

It was also equally possible that there was just something wrong with this file.

He’d called in a few favours with the Investigations department and they’d prioritized his request for a datasteal from the Bureau and sent him the packet as soon as it was in. It had come with a note:

**“Before you ask, we don’t know either.”**

As soon as he’d opened it, he’d understood what that meant. What he was looking at was incomprehensible.

Not in the sense that he didn’t understand it, but in the sense that he legitimately couldn’t see it.

Where there should have been text, there were huge, flickering blocks of static that almost seemed to exist separate from his monitor, to float above the contents within.

When he’d tried viewing the datapacket on his comm, the same thing had happened.

When he’d accessed the source code for the files, nothing had initially seemed wrong, but as soon as he’d gotten into the part of the code that related to the content, the same thing had happened.

The static continued to flicker in front of his eyes even as he realized that it wasn’t obstructing or altering the light coming from his monitor: when he raised his hand, the bones of it were still bathed in a uniform wash of blue. As he looked away, he realized he could see the contents of the document, dim and unreadable in the periphery of his vision, but when he looked back, they had reverted to static.

Not his equipment then, and not the file.

Which meant it was his eyes. His brain. There was something about this document that his mind couldn’t even process.

“What,” he said to his empty cube, calm and collected, “the actual fuck is this, Taako?”

***

Taako was sprawled out on his new bed, watching an old video- only two-dimensional, which was quaint and a little inconvenient- when he heard the air tear again.

He looked up, eager both for the distraction and for the chance to get another look at a fine-looking man again.

Kravitz was standing in the door to the room, holding a datadisc. _Ripped_ , he thought, eying it, _definitely stolen._

“S’up?” he asked, grinning.

Kravitz opened his mouth, said nothing, and held out the disc towards him.

Reluctantly, Taako rolled out of bed and approached him. “What’s this? You make me a mixtape, my man? Gonna ask me to senior homecoming, see if we should do prom?”

When Kravitz didn’t even falter, he knew something serious was up.

“I thought- I was hoping you could tell me,” Kravitz said slowly after he took it. “It just looks like static to me.”

 _Oh_ , Taako thought, and also said, without meaning to, and only realized he had when Kravitz fixed him with an unwavering stare.

“You know what I’m talking about,” Kravitz accused, and stepped towards him. “What is this?”

Taako tried to adopt a breezy smile and felt himself fail to. “Just something I made with an ex-boyfriend, I don’t know. You snooping on me, Krav? Didn’t realize you were so interested in making this thing exclusive, bubbeleh.”

Kravitz was very close, and still very handsome, Taako noticed. _Cree-zus, I need to get laid_ , he thought.

Kravitz’ eyes flickered from one of his to the other, searching. “Who are you?” he asked again. “You can’t be- you’re clearly not just some disgraced celebrity chef.” He was still approaching, clearly trying to gain ground. Taako let him crowd in.

He smelled, Taako noticed, like dry cleaning chemicals and like the lingering metallic flavour of recycled air and like the dust that inevitably settled into the seams of old tech, but also, faint and strange, like tilled earth after a heavy rain.  

“Naw, I’m also cute as hell,” Taako answered immediately, a little grateful for an opening he knew what to do with. “Pretty sure you noticed that, though, huh?” he teased.

Kravitz frowned. “I could- I can still bring you in for processing,” he threatened quietly. “Taako, I need you to fucking cooperate-”

“Yikes! You kiss your mother with that mouth, huh, homie? That’s the mouth you-” Taako interrupted, mock-aghast, and Kravitz scowled at him.

“Stop it. I need you to give me a- just one, one reason why I shouldn’t-” he started to threaten.

“-plan on kissing me with? Talking like that?” Taako continued, a little louder to drown out Kravitz’ faltering threats, leaning in flirtatiously. They were so close that their noses brushed. _He doesn’t breathe when he’s not talking_ , Taako noticed. _Huh._

It was a joke. It was honestly intended to be a joke. He said it without ambition or expectation. It was meant to function as a deflection, something to keep Kravitz off-balance.

And yet, there still followed a moment:

A moment in which Kravitz paused, and glanced down at his lips.

“Oh damn, you really are thinking about it, huh?” he asked, or at least meant to, because that was the point when Kravitz really did kiss him.

It was so entirely unexpected, such a puzzling break from his usual stern countenance, that there was a solid second where Taako didn’t know what to do.

A second was long enough that Kravitz hesitated and began to move as though to pull away, but as soon as Taako had caught up, he wound his arms around Kravitz’ neck, tracing his fingers under the collar of his shirt.

His mouth was cold in a way Taako hadn’t expected but didn’t hate, but his tongue was warm, as Taako discovered when he flicked his own against the seam of Kravitz’ lips experimentally.

It wasn’t a perfect kiss: it was unexpected and therefore, inevitably, had been misaimed, hitting him mid-word and off-centre as he spoke, and it was inexpert in the way that first kisses always were, always rife with mismatched tempos and different expectations, but it felt good and Kravitz smelled good- albeit in a strange sort of way- and when his hands settled on Taako’s hips, he shivered for reasons that had nothing to do with how bizarrely cold Kravitz’ fingers seemed to be.

Taako was, uncharacteristically, the one who broke away first, but only because he had to breathe and that meant this was, by default, a game of chicken he couldn’t win. “Well, hey,” he said breathlessly, “okay. Sure.”

He saw Kravitz’ pupils narrow and watched as he realized how far from the beaten path he’d strayed.

“Uh,” Kravitz said, stepping back, “Huh. Hmm.” His eyes darted to the left and, for a weird moment, his already angular face almost seemed to grow gaunt. “Huh,” he said again, and then opened and escaped through a rift, leaving Taako still standing there in the doorway, half-hard and out-of-breath.

***

Kravitz was standing by the water cooler, chugging cold water out of a conical paper cup with a weird intensity, eyes open and staring, skin growing on and receding from his bones in a way that was difficult to explain. Every so often, as he veered closer to calcic than organic, a little would splash through his jaw onto the front of his suit.

“Uh. Hey, Kravitz. Are you…?” Cynthia started to ask before Lana reached over and squeezed her shoulder.

“It’s better not to ask,” she suggested quietly. “Kravitz is on some old-hire shit. Probably just that somebody finally told him about the d-wide install we’ve got coming up. You get him started about how ‘wasteful’ it is to replace tech ‘before it’s obsolete’, he won’t stop. That’ll be your whole day, gem.”

Cynthia nodded sagely and turned to kiss the nearest finger of the hand on her shoulder. “I still feed bad for him. Seems a bit fragged,” she murmured. She could almost feel Lana’s smile as the finger in question stroked her cheek.

“Don’t,” Lana whispered, voice wry. “He’s so senior and has such a clean ‘cord that he’d have to turn revenant for the Queen to put him on paid leave.” She hummed as they watched Kravitz refill his cup again. “One of these days, he’ll fuck something up, go full bluescreener, and figure that out on his own.” Cynthia smiled as she felt Lana kiss the side of her head.

“I hope it’s a fun fuckup, at least,” she said softly, and Lana laughed.

***

Taako was on his knees, thighs quaking, with three fingers knuckle-deep in his own ass when someone knocked, heavy-knuckled and demanding, on the door. There was a moment where he just stared in the direction of the noise, disbelieving.

“Oh, come on,” he muttered under his breath, biting back a sound as he curled his fingers inside himself.

 _“Taako, I know you’re there,”_ a familiar voice called, more stern than he remembered it sounding. Something about it went straight to his dick. _“I’m sure you know why I’m here. Open the door, please.”_

He bit his lip, thrusting and curling his fingers faster, trying not to get distracted.

The knocking continued. _“I know you just want me to leave you alone,”_ the suit said. _“I can’t do that until you give me something I can work with.”_ A beat, a moment. A moment in which Taako thought, stupidly, that he was done. _“I don’t want to be here either, you know. Help me out and you won’t have to see me here again.”_

Taako could feel the creep of orgasm receding again, frightened off by distraction, and pulled his fingers from his asshole with a frustrated whine. “Give me a second,” he called breathlessly, slapping a hand against the bedspread, angrier than he had any right to be. He took his time washing his hands just to make the suit wait.

The suit looked just the same: huge, square-shouldered, visibly muscular even through the fabric of his AA suit, face hidden behind the slick glass exterior of his mask.

“What?” Taako demanded impatiently.

“I think you know ‘what’, Taako,” the suit told him. He sounded unimpressed.

 _Good_ , Taako thought spitefully, and waved him in. As he passed, crowding Taako into the wall purely by necessity, the thought came, unbidden: _Fuck you’re big. I wonder what your-_

Taako let out a big, noisy breath. His cock was still mostly hard in the folds of his pants. _Let’s get this shit over with._

The ass situation was, he noticed as the suit passed into the living room, very good. Round and firm.  

“Why aren’t you at work?” the suit asked him, uncharacteristically serious. “There has to be a reason upper management is willing to accept, or they would’ve sent the Regulators after you already. I just need to know what that is so I can file the paperwork. Then I’m gone.” Taako could see his own reflection in his mask, hair mussed and pupils blown.

“I don’t fuckin’ know, my man,” he said, irritated.

“Please, Taako. I just need you to-” the suit started to say, and Taako lost it.

“To what?” he snapped. “To tell you something I don’t know? Because I don’t fucking know!” he ranted. “I don’t know what the fuck you want, my guy, all I know is that I was minding my own fucking business-” He made a jerking motion over his crotch, holding eye contact with his reflection in the suit’s mask. “-when you showed up out of nowhere and started asking me shit I can’t answer.”

“Uh-” the suit said, visibly taken aback despite the mask.

“You know what I’d be doing right now if you hadn’t shown up?” he seethed. “Sleeping off my post-orgasm high. What’re you going to do about that, huh? Are you going to finger me? Are you going to put those thick-ass fingers in my asshole and make me blow my load as compensation?”

He frustrated. He was horny. He was, absolutely and unambiguously, just being mean at this point. Using shock-value language to scare off some dumb piece of shit from admin who probably had a wife back at the Bureau and thought letting her peg him treaded a little too close to the line.

Kravitz’ tongue in his mouth had reminded him how good it felt to be touched by another person and now he couldn’t turn that off. He had neither ambition nor expectation: he was just taking it out on the easiest target.

There was a moment of silence in which he saw himself in the suit’s dark mask, flushed and snarling, and then the suit said,

“Is that an invitation?” in a tone he couldn’t quite parse.

“What?” he answered automatically.

“Are you… asking me to do that?” the suit said behind his mask, voice still strange. “For you?”

 _Are you offering?_ He thought, even as his mouth said, “Yeah. Yeah, I am. And?”

That big, suited hand reached so slowly, so cautiously, that Taako kept expecting it to do something unexpected. Instead, it smoothed over his stomach, around his waist, and down under his pants to cup his ass before pulling him close. “Well, uh. If you’re asking,” the suit said quietly.

 _Holy shit_ , Taako thought. “And if I’m asking?”

That masked face, bent to watch him, was steady as a finger pressed against his asshole.

“Holy shit,” Taako croaked, this time aloud, curling his nails into the strange fabric of the suit’s anti-arcane suit.

“Were you already fingering yourself?” the suit asked him.

“Uh,” Taako said as a fingertip paused before breaching him, “yeah. Uh, yeah. Yeah, go for-” He broke off into incoherence as a thick, gloved finger pressed gently into him, pausing before passing the first knuckle.

The finger curled and Taako’s knees nearly buckled. He heard the suit exhale shakily behind his mask.

That other gloved hand came up to thumb at Taako’s lips, coaxing his chin up, fingers exploring the contour of his jaw.

The finger inside his ass started to piston, in and out, and Taako had to catch himself in earnest, choking down a breathless whine. Shivers of pleasure radiated through him, electric.

“This probably isn't the best way to do this,” the suit said, making no effort to move either of them as he began to finger Taako in earnest.

 _Shit, he knows what he’s doing_ , Taako thought dimly, incredulously, as he clung to the front of his AA suit, feeling the thumb against his lips but too far gone to try anything as cute as sucking on it. He could feel the orgasm starting to overtake him.

When the hand left his face and slid down the front of his pants, he couldn’t have prevented it even if he’d wanted to.

He came, shaking and whining, in the hands of a person whose name he didn’t know and whose face he’d never seen.

Taako couldn’t see his face, but he saw the pause he gave as he looked at his fingers, connected by thick threads of semen, before helping Taako, weak-kneed, to bed.

“Well,” the suit said, sounding strangely casual despite the noticeable bulge in the crotch of his AA suit, “next time, then.”

***

Brad sat at his desk, running a hand over his face, through his hair, anything that felt like it might help. _This is what gets me fired._

He hadn’t realized just how profoundly he had been feeling his lack of options until Taako had started talking. Until he’d said yes. That look of surprise and then interest on his face when Brad had offered, succumbing to impulse.

The way he’d sagged against his chest, moaning, eyes half-lidded, as Brad had fingered him-

Brad scrubbed his hands over his face, willing himself to wake up from what he couldn’t decide wasn’t a dream or a nightmare. He was still hard in his anti-arcane suit. He’d completely forgotten to take it off when he’d gotten into his office.

He’d been so tight. _What does he feel like without gloves? Is he as soft as he looks?_ Brad thought, and then buried his face in his hands, groaning.

***

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> C:/shadowrunfacts.exe/
> 
> > frag/fragged: from frag grenade. fucked up
> 
> aw yeah we getting sexy
> 
> three chapters counts as slow built right? asking for me, an absolute fucker with no self-control


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Words are had. Papers are signed. Kravitz and Brad are good responsible boys. Taako isn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> beep beep it's nah "two-speed" tho back after a month with more hot garbage nobody asked for, how've y'all been

He woke, feeling loose and warm, to the sound of rain against his window. It was early: the few working streetlights in the area were still on. Somewhere across the street, a neon sign was flashing. A rain-distorted aurora of blue and green light stretched across the ceiling of his room. Thunder rumbled in the distance.  

He watched the lights for a while, still blanketed in the languid weight of half-sleep, and ran his fingertips over himself. He could still feel, dimly, big hands on him. A thumb on his lips, a palm on his stomach, cupping his ass, in his-

_The suit._

Taako stopped, suddenly very awake.

“Holy shit,” he croaked, and sat up. He was still clothed, and under those clothes, still sticky with the remnants of orgasm. It hadn’t been a dream or a particularly involved fantasy. Yesterday had really happened. “Holy shit!”

He’d made out with a reaper. A real, actual, flesh-and-blood Emissary, one of the Raven Queen’s legendarily dangerous RUNR operatives.

He’d also had his ass fingered by some slab of protein in an AA suit who claimed to be Bureau admin, but that was less impressive. _Good with his hands, though_. As he stripped and wandered to the bathroom to wash up, Taako wondered idly what he looked like under his mask.

He sounded kind of like he could be relied on to have a nice jawline, but then again, the image conjured up by a voice was never a guarantee. Hell, for all he knew, the suit could be a decently good-looking guy who never bothered to trim his beard and always had dirt under his fingernails.

Taako shuddered. _What a fuckin’ tragedy._

But the reaper, Kravitz: now there was a man, he thought, running his fingers through his hair as he stepped into the spray of the shower. Clean. Well-dressed. Good posture. A little stiff, maybe, but flexible enough that a little baiting could coax him into making the first move, which was a good sign.

His hands had been obscenely cold, though.

Despite the warmth of the water, Taako shivered a little just thinking about it, about the touch of Kravitz’ fingers on the bare skin between the hem of his shirt and the waist of his pants. _Not just hands_ , he thought, frowning. His lips had been cold, too, and the skin under the collar of shirt.

And then there was the fact that he didn’t breathe when he wasn’t talking. The way he inhaled as though the only function it served was to provide air to speak with. The way the only pulse Taako had felt when pressed against him was his own.

He’d heard the rumours, of course. They all had.

No one seemed too sure what the qualifications were to be hired as a reaper, but the most popular theory was that the reapers had all worked for the Raven Queen in some capacity whilst alive, followed closely by the theory that the Blackwing Conglomerate poached talent from competitors in the most fucked-up way possible, but there were still other who believed that the Raven Queen selected candidates based on personal interest.

The one unifying factor of all of those theories was simple: everyone in the RUNR department had both a birthday and a rebirthday to celebrate at the office. _Must be hell on catering costs._

Which meant Kravitz was a dead man, something Taako’s experience with him thus far seemed to suggest was true.

He closed his eyes against the spray, considering it.

 _Pretty lively for a dead guy,_ he thought.

***

She appeared without sound or light. The air took on a feeling similar to that of an encroaching storm.

**“Kravitz.”**

He froze with his fingers still poised over his keyboard, feeling the hairs on his arms rise as though by some prickle of static. It was finally happening. _I’ve disappointed her._

He swallowed against sudden dryness.

“My Queen,” he murmured obediently, but didn’t turn.

She chuckled. It sounded strange and hollow through the mouth of her proxy. **“Kravitz, look at me.”**

He did as she bade him do, turning reluctantly into his chair to face her, hands folded in his lap as he awaited her judgement.

Her proxy was unassuming, just some greyed and aging human woman who had agreed to the Terms, but he could see the brilliance of his Queen in her expression and mannerisms. **“You’ve spent the past two days attempting to have your bounty reassigned. Why?”**

She was testing him. The correct and sensible thing to do was, of course, to confess everything and throw himself on her mercy.

Instead, he found himself saying,

“I don’t think I’m- I think this assignment might be better suited to someone else.”

She blinked, and then slowly raised one greying brow. **“How unexpected. For what reason?”** she asked. **“You’ve handled far more difficult assignments without complaint in the past. What is it that you find objectionable about this one?”**

“The subject of the bounty,” he said, feeling a little awkward. She already knew, surely. It had never occurred to him to wonder whether or not she was privy to everything he did.

**“What is it about the subject that you find objectionable?”**

Kravitz opened his mouth. Closed it.

Her brows furrowed. **“Do you feel that he poses a threat to you?”**

“No,” Kravitz admitted.

**“Do you feel that he poses a threat to the Conglomerate?”**

“No,” Kravitz told her. He realized he was fidgeting nervously and forced himself to stop.

Her eyes rose from his fingers to his face. She’d seen, of course.

 **“Do you feel there is a conflict of interest at play which would impact your ability to carry out your duties as an Emissary?”** she asked.

He hesitated. “Uh- no.”

He watched, chagrined, as her eyebrows rose. **“No?”**

“No. Um, not particularly, no,” he repeated.

Something dangerously close to amusement was emerging in her expression. **“Then I’m afraid I can’t see any ‘particular’ reason to oblige your request, Kravitz.”**

He wanted to object. “But-”

 **“Unless there’s something you haven’t disclosed?”** Her eyes were intent.

_Tell her._

He hesitated again. “No, my Queen,” he said quietly.

She just watched him, wordless and inscrutable, for a long moment, and then her eyes wandered over the rig behind him. She frowned.

**“Kravitz.”**

He tensed, knowing what was coming. He knew that tone. “Yes, my Queen?”

 **“Remind me,”** she mused, lips pursed, **“when was it that I asked you to visit Requisitions and have this system replaced?”**

“It still- it works fine, my Queen, there’s nothing wrong with-” he protested weakly as she began to approach, instinctually trying to insert himself between her and his monitor.

 **“Version 4.4? Our system is only on version 1.3. No,”** she said, and then squinted. **“Kravitz, which operating system is that?”**

“It’s just that-” He stuttered, putting his hands up defensively, “I always found the old OS a lot more intuitive-”

She sighed with a weightiness that seemed to carry the fullness of time immemorial. **“I can tell this conversation is overdue. Kravitz,”** she said, infinitely patient, cupping his face in her cool, dark hands, **“of all my Emissaries, I can think of few as diligent or as dutiful as you. Which is why,”** she smiled, tone wry, **“I ask you to consider what I am about to say to you as though it were of the same import as your work.”**

Kravitz looked up at her, searching for the goddess behind those unassuming brown eyes. “…I’ll try, my Queen.”

She leaned in until their foreheads were almost touching. **“A death is, in some ways, no more remarkable than a tiny point of ink upon a page,”** she told him. **“It is that which ends the sentence life began. Each one, once completed, informs the one which will follow, and is informed by the one which came before, and as such, as it is being written, the sentence fears to end prematurely, before the thought is finished. The promise of an end has as much influence on the content of a life as a beginning. This is the nature of having lived. Do you understand?”**

True to his word, he tried. He thought about it, long and deeply.

His bafflement must have shown on his face, because she sighed again. For a long, pensive moment, she was silent.

 **“Remove the end and the period will become a comma. The sentence continues on, longer than intended, becoming more and more confused. If it is not given new purpose and meaning, it becomes deranged. Unparseable. Wrong,”** she said finally. **“But even with purpose, any life that continues for too long past its natural conclusion develops… quirks of punctuation.”**

Kravitz was trying very hard not to frown.

She smiled at him. **“You face an eternity entirely free from mortal consequence, Kravitz. So,”** she said **. “it doesn’t surprise me that you’ve picked up some bad habits over the years.”**

He stopped trying not to frown. “My Queen-”

She laughed and pinched his cheeks, almost as though he were a rowdy child. **“It would be… despotic of me to forbid you your eccentricities, but still, I do wish you would pick something a little more indulgent than hoarding outdated office supplies and hiding them from me.”**

“There’s nothing wrong with old tech,” he muttered defensively.

She closed her eyes and pinched him harder, hard enough to cause discomfort. He flinched and tried to go calcic, only to discover that he couldn’t.

 **“You agreed to listen,”** she admonished, letting him go, and then tutted as she looked around his cube again. **“There must be some sort of inadvisable foolishness you can get up to that’s preferable to this. Something a little more pleasurable,”** she mused. When Kravitz started to sputter out a protest, she fixed her eyes on him and raised a stern finger. **“You told me you would try. I intend to hold you to that. I will not ask you to manifest a dozen new Vices from nothing, but I expect to see some evidence that you have at least tried to have some fun for once. Do I make myself clear?”**

Kravitz wasn’t sure what his face was doing.

She raised her eyebrows. **“Do I make myself clear, Kravitz?”** she asked again.

“Uh,” he said, “I- uh. Um, yes? Yes, my Queen.”

She looked at him with an expression that suggested she wasn’t sure if she believed him, cast one more disapproving glance around his musty and tech-cluttered cube, and then she was gone, slipped into shadows that never were.

A single black feather drifted through the air were she once was, setting on the floor near his foot.

He stared at it, dumbfounded.

***

It was better to get it over with. If he could find out why Taako was AWOL and have the paperwork filed in time for the weekend, great. If Taako came back to the Bureau and got him reprimanded or fired, well, that was the bed he’d made for himself. He’d known better. What he’d done had been impulsive and stupid.

Taako answered the door with suspicious eagerness. “Well hey, big guy,” he greeted, “missed me that much, huh?” He seemed much happier to see him than he’d expected. Brad’s stomach did a strange swoop.

Christ, but he had a gorgeous smile. With the light from the windows streaming in behind him, he looked almost angelic.

 _Steady, Brad,_ he told himself. “Can I come in?”

Taako waved him in with all the familiarity of an old friend. Kicking the door closed behind them, he began dogging Brad’s heels at a distance that suggested he had a much different idea of how this was going to go than Brad did. He wasn’t just close enough to touch, but close enough that he had to be careful not to touch him accidentally.

“Make yourself comfortable, my man,” Taako was saying, gesturing expansively as he drifted past him towards the living room. “I’m gonna make some chicken later if you wanna stick around-”

Brad disengaged and took up a position by the kitchen table, deciding it was probably a safer option. “Would you like to have a seat?” he asked, indicating the chair across from him.

“Uhh,” Taako said, slowing and then turning around. “Okay?” His breezy, suggestive smile was starting to falter. “Sure. Wasn’t planning on getting cookin’ until around five or six, though.” He was still smiling when he took his seat, but his eyes were narrowed.

“So. About your paperwork-” he started to say.

Taako’s smile vanished. “Seriously?” he said, visibly incredulous.

“If your absenteeism isn’t accounted for, there’ll be a gap in your hours when they go to Payroll at the end of the month,” Brad explained, or tried to.

Taako had slumped forward over the table, resting his chin in a hand. “So that’s how it is, huh?” he complained. “You’re just gonna fingerblast my asshole and jerk me off and then it’s, what, back to business as usual, my man?”

Brad sighed. His own breath washed back over his face inside the mask, hot and unpleasant. “The last time we met, my behaviour towards you was inappropriate,” he said smoothly, “and for that, I’m very sorry.”

“Well, I’m not,” Taako answered immediately. “You can call that an apology not accepted, my guy. You wanna apologize to me, I think you’re going to have find something better to be sorry for,” he said with a sly, suggestive smile.

 _Steady_ , he told himself again.

There was, admittedly, a moment where he floundered, speechless. “Uh. I- Taako, I just need to know what to put on your form so you can be formally declared away on leave,” he said, determined to keep this conversation on track.

For a long moment, Taako just looked at him, eyes narrowed and mouth neutral.

“I can promise you, if you cooperate-” Brad started to coax.

“You got a girlfriend, my man?” Taako interrupted, still sitting with his chin in his hand. “Or a boyfriend? Or, y’know, whatever. A partner?”

Brad faltered. “Hm? I-” he said first, and then, “That’s not an appropriate question to be asking in a work setting.”

Taako rolled his eyes at the gentle reprimand. “Uhh, sounds a you issue, my guy- Taako’s just hanging out. Look at me,” he said, gesturing to himself, sockless and bare-legged. “Do I look like I’m on the fucking clock?”

Brad bit back another sigh. “This won’t take long. I just need you to-”

“If that sentence ends with ‘fill this out’ or ‘sign this in triplicate’ then I’m not fucking interested,” Taako yawned. “And you know what? You don’t get to take the moral high ground with me if you’re stepping out on somebody to fingerblast assholes in the slums, homie.”

Brad’s formidable patience was wearing thin. He took a deep, steadying breath. “First off,” he said, trying to keep his tone light, “no. This isn’t an appropriate conversation to be having right now, but I’ll give you this: this answer to your question is ‘no’, and I appreciate your concerns about my ethics in regards to what happened the last time we met. Accountability is important. Second,” he said, clasping his hands together on the table, “I’m sorry, but I think there’s been a misunderstanding. We are both ‘on the clock’, Taako. We are both working citizens of the Bureau. As a working citizen, if I were to go on, say, vacation without filing the appropriate paperwork, then I would still be considered responsible for my regular duties as an employee of the Bureau. That means if I were to go on my vacation without getting approval from one of the branches that can grant leave, I would be considered in defection of my duties.” He realized he was forcing a smile despite the fact that Taako couldn’t see it. “And once my file went to the Defection branch, they would send the Regulators after me, which I think we can agree isn’t great.”

“Sure,” Taako agreed, looking bored.

“I’ll be honest with you,” Brad said conversationally, “when they sent your file to me, the first thing I did was forward it to Defection.” At that, Taako quirked an eyebrow at him. His expression was difficult to parse. “But, for some reason, they sent it back. But so did Medical, and every other branch I sent it to, because nothing was submitted that would allow them to authorize your leave. This isn’t supposed to be my job, Taako, it’s yours. Right now, I’m doing your job for you. So, please-”

Taako’s expression grew even more inscrutable. “Uh, okay. So why are you even here, my dude? ‘Cause it kinda sounds like this isn’t your problem.”

“Because it has to get done,” Brad told him, “and if I don’t do it, no one is going to. And if it doesn’t get done, someone in Payroll is going to end up working overtime just trying to figure out what happened, and that’s going to ruin their whole week.”

“Why do you even care?” Taako sneered.

“Because I care about other people,” Brad snapped. “Why don’t you?” It wasn’t professional. It was absolutely not an appropriate way for him to speak to a colleague. He was just frustrated. _Steady. Christ, Brad, keep it steady._ “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “That was uncalled for.”

Taako looked stunned. “Huh,” he said, and then went quiet for a long moment. “Huh.”

Brad looked at him. There was nothing magical about the awkward tension he’d created, so his AA suit couldn’t protect him from it. He started to get up from his chair. “I’ll come back another-”

“Give me the forms.”

Brad looked at him. Taako had his hand out, palm up, but he wasn’t looking at him. “What?”

“Give me the fucking forms,” Taako muttered. “Cree- _zus_.” He took them roughly, yanking them out of Brad’s hand and glowering at them.

Slowly, Brad sat back down, a little bewildered. He watched Taako squint and mutter at the papers as he flicked through them, and then Taako’s hand shot out again.

Brad looked at it, uncomprehending.

“Pen,” Taako snapped.

“Oh.” Brad fished one out and handed it to him.

He didn’t write for long, but he wrote with a deep, unsatisfied frown. Even from across the table, Brad could see that his penmanship was incredible. His writing featured loops and swirls that seemed purely ornamental, no matter how absentmindedly he seemed to include them.

He held the pen with a strange sort of intentionality, and kept pausing and looking at it before frowning and continuing to write.

“…Do you need a different pen?” Brad ventured.

Taako seemed startled by the question, eyes flicking up to look at him. Brad could see them searching his mask for his eyes. “Huh? No. Why?”

Brad glanced over at the page in front of Taako. From what he could see, it didn’t look like the pen was running out of ink. “It just seemed like you were having problems with it.”

“Huh?” Taako said again, and then blinked. “No, cha boy’s good. I’m just not used to it.”

 _Oh_ , Brad thought. Because Taako was an elf, he’d assumed he was older, around his age. He’d heard about the younger generation’s issues with writing in analog, but he’d never seen it in person.

Still, Taako’s writing seemed awfully ornate for someone whose entire schooling had involved typing on a digital interface. _Maybe he worked as a calligrapher_?

As he watched Taako continue to write in that weird stop-start way, his stomach did a weird dip. Suddenly, Taako’s apparent selfishness and immaturity made more sense. He’d have to have been disenfranchised pretty young to have already been part of an established shadowrunning crew two years prior.

“Take your time,” Brad told him gently. Taako looked at him, one brow raised. “There’s no rush.”

That earned him a weird look and an, “uhh… okay? Sure.”

When he was done, Brad tidied the form into a neat stack and slid it back into its envelope. “It’s been a pleasure, Taako.”

Taako was still giving him that weird look. “I guess there’s no way I’m convincing you to pick up where we left off last time, huh, my guy?”

 _Jesus Christ_ , Brad thought, suddenly incredibly grateful that Taako couldn’t see his face. _Keep it steady, Brad._

“You know, as much as I would like that,” he admitted, “I don’t think I’m cut out to be a shadowrunner, so, um… it’s been a pleasure, Taako,” he said again. “When you come back, maybe I’ll see you around.”

He left with a haste that meant he didn’t catch what Taako muttered after him.

“See you around? I don’t even know what you look like, asshole. Fuck!”

***

He was in a foul mood by the time evening came.

He knew Kravitz was going to be a tough nut to crack, but after what had happened the last time, he’d been sure he could persuade the suit to fuck him. Taako already knew he could do some damage with his fingers. It had seemed like a worthwhile gamble to assume he might be able to do some damage with his dick, too. _Big guy. Good money says he’s got a decently big cock._

He wouldn’t even have had to take off the mask if he didn’t want to. Hell, Taako would’ve let him blindfold him if he was really that concerned with anonymity-

He knew, on some level, that his growing fixation on sex was just some fucked-up form of escapism. He wasn’t used to being alone, still wasn’t used to knowing what he knew, and he didn’t want to think about any of it.

He just wanted to get fucked until his mind went numb, wanted to close his eyes and let someone rail his ass so hard it forced the thoughts straight out of his head, but everyone around him seemed determined to be responsible.

“Fuck!” he said again, slapping his hand down on the counter. “Fuck.”

 _They’re not the only two dudes in the city_ , he thought.

He was safer here, in the pollution, in this disenfranchised district. Nobody held dominion here.

It wasn’t smart to leave. It was risky.

He’d have to be stupid to leave for such a bullshit reason.

***

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> C:/shadowrunfacts.exe/
> 
> i genuinely don't know even i'm starting to lose track of what shit i made up and what's canon


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a small world full of new things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this chapter is a little krav light. our good bone boy is old and slow and i promise you'll get more krav goodness soon. krav, like the tortoise, will get there eventually

 

“‘Try to have some fun for once’,” Kravitz muttered, fidgeting near the entrance to his cube anxiously as Requisitions staff hauled unit after unit of outmoded tech out of it. “What does that even mean? Is this supposed to be fun?”

“Christ in a nutrisoy canister,” one of the technicians yelled from inside. “Jerr, come take a look at this- this is a fuckin’ first gen Maureen Miller cyberdeck!”

“Pre-Lucas? Bulldrek,” another tech called back. Kravitz could hear them shuffling around in the confined space under his desk. “Holy shit. It’s analog.”

“Yeah, it’s pre-2.0. Pre-crash tech, man, and it still works! Gotta be at least twenty-five years old-”

“Be-” Kravitz started to say, crossing and uncrossing his arms as he resisted the urge go in despite haven been expressly forbidden to, “please be careful with that.”

The techs went quiet.

“Hey, Karl,” he heard one of them whisper to the other, “you sure it’s a good idea to be SEing one of the Reapers? He doesn’t seem too happy about it.”

“Well, that too fuckin’ bad. It’s what She asked for, isn’t it?”

He could hear the uncertainty in the original speaker’s voice. “Yeah, but-”

“Chill. We’re arctic, man, She’s got our backs. Who would you rather piss off: him or Her?”

Kravitz glowered at them as they came to the door to hand off more of his things to the Requisitions staff. Neither would meet his eyes. Both had gone ashen after a single glance in his direction.

He told himself that it was because they’d realized he’d heard them and not because he’d gone full calcic.

***

_Red hair_ , he thought, and then, _no, black._

It felt like it’d been an unreasonably long time since he’d left the fog, let alone gone out purely to have fun. He couldn’t just stroll out as himself but, shit, that was what illusion magic was for.

_Human? No._ If he was planning on getting fucked, the chances of someone noticing that the details of his face and body didn’t match up with how they felt when touched went up exponentially. Better just to be a different elf, tonight.

He softened his features subtly- enough to be different but not draw remark if someone touched his face- and then flicked through eye colours, trying to decide on which he liked the most. He settled on a pale honey brown and then scrutinized himself. _Hm._

Someone pounded on the door to the bathroom. “Hey, you gonna be in there all day, buddy? Other people need to piss, you know, yours isn’t the only bladder in the fuckin’ world.”

Taako squinted over at it, rolling his eyes before gathering up his AA suit and shoving it in his bag. He slid the door open quickly enough to catch the person on the other side – some tired and bored-looking human in a patched leather jacket – by surprise.

He could see their face change as they saw him, transitioning from irritation to surprise to dumbstruck awe. _So far, so good._

He arched a dark eyebrow at them and held their gaze. “Hey. Sorry, babe,” he said smoothly, feeling out the silky, even cadence of the voice he’d decided on. “All yours.”

They didn’t say anything as he swept by, pushing his hair back from his face with a practiced artlessness, but he felt their eyes following him and heard the person behind them make a disgruntled noise and push past them into the newly vacated bathroom.

_Fuck yeah_ , he thought, _cha boy’s deffo getting some tonight_.

***

Choriya Prinh did an undisguised doubletake when she finally saw him, narrow eyes going almost comically round. “Brad?” The shot she’d been pouring started overflowing, and the older dwarf she’d been pouring it for reached a hand out as though to undo the damage. “Fuck me, it is you!”

He shrugged off his coat and hung it on a hook under the lip of the bar, chuckling. “How’s it going, Chopin?” He shot the dwarf at the end of the bar an apologetic smile as she struggled to lift her overfilled shot to her lips without spilling it on her chicly-braided beard. She shrugged amiably back at him before throwing it back.  

Visibly startled, Choriya let out a little bark of laughter. “Cho-? Holy shit! Nobody’s called me Chopin since- Christ, not since you were last here. Siddown, siddown,” she said, gesturing to the range of open stools in front of him. Obediently, Brad chose the one closest to where he’d hung his jacket and began the long process of trying to get himself situated in a way that wouldn’t mean his knees were constantly bashing into the underside of the bar. It’d been long enough that he’d forgotten how, he realized. Choriya noticed. “Sorry, Brad,” she said, grimacing sympathetically as he shifted awkwardly on his stool. “I gave your stool to the new KM a few months ago because I didn’t think you were ever coming back. Speaking of which: what the hell happened to you? Where have you been? Swear to god, Jeremy- you remember Jeremy, yeah? Auntie from the corner booth? Anyway, he asked me if you fucking died, no joke. And I didn’t even know what to tell him!”

Brad frowned. “Woah, hey, hey- it hasn’t been that long,” he argued, “it’s only been… I don’t know, a few months?”

Choriya’s thick dark brows migrated up her dark forehead as steadily as raindrops down a windowpane. “A few months? A few months, Brad? It’s been two and a half years. You don’t even know Leanna and she’s been here three times a week for the past two!”

The dwarf at the end of the bar, Leanna, shot him a toothy grin and patted her coppery-brown chignon with a hand that was more rings than skin. “Well, y’know, the drinks are good and the owner is cute,” she said, raspy voice teasing, “and the Stars don’t bother us. That’s more than enough for the likes of little ol’ me.”

Choriya shot a withering look in her direction, but Brad had known her long enough to know that she was preening internally, and it looked like Leanna knew that too. He tried, unsuccessfully, to stifle a laugh and earned himself a scowl. “Two and a half years, Brad,” she accused again. “I know you and Yves calling it quits was messy, but seriously, what the fuck?”

He leaned forward on his elbows. “Okay, so it’s been,” he feigned thoughtfulness, smiling when she gave him a disgusted look, “thirty months, give or take,” he allowed. “Am I not allowed to come back?”

“If you’re looking to flirt, I’m tempted to say no,” she snorted. “I swear to god, if you pull a classic Brassoon tonight, I’m going to take it as an omen that I should ban you,” she threatened.

He laughed and shook his head. “I won’t. This isn’t tenth grade, Chopin. And I still don’t know why you called me that,” he admitted, feeling vaguely nostalgic. “I never even played the bassoon.”

“And I never liked Chopin, yet here we are,” Choriya retorted. “So what’re you having?”

He laughed. “Fair enough. What do you have on tap?”

***

Kravitz looked at his cube, frowning.

He had been frowning at his cube for the past hour. On some level, he had a dim sense that he was probably waiting for someone to ask him why, but nobody had yet.

It was bigger than he remembered it being. His desk had a lot of open space under it. The floor looked weirdly barren. His deck and monitor seemed flat and insubstantial.

There was a slim brown box on his desk that he was worried contained his new comm unit.

He continued to frown at his cube, arms crossed over his chest.

Someone passing by behind him slowed down for a moment and then hurried away. Through the thin walls, he heard someone in a cube nearby try to suppress a chuckle.

He frowned at the box on his desk, reaching for it with all the hesitation and disgust of someone picking up something dead.

It was so light that, at first, he thought it had to be empty. It wasn’t. Inside was a smooth pane of dark glass barely the length of his hand, rimmed in a barely-there chrome silver casing. He took it out and flipped it over, looking for the keypad, and found none.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something yellow fluttering towards the floor.

An adhesive note. He picked it up.

**“This is the oldest model Miller Enterprises still makes. There’s a paper manual in the box. Don’t say I never did anything for you, Bones. -Xira”**

He stared at it, bewildered. He could faintly see dark lines bleeding through the paper from the other side. He flipped it over.

**“P.S.: I’m the ‘new’ Requisitions officer (10 years at BC and counting, chummer). I’ve been telling Queenie you come to your biannual update consults. Don’t hose it up unless you want me to order weekly inspections of your cube. -Tech Overlord X”**

Kravitz frowned at it.

No one interrupted him.

***

He’d forgotten how rapidly things tended to change in the entertainment district.

Nü Fisch was gone, as was Likwid.  The Argyrian was still standing but, without taking into consideration the fact that he ran a not-insignificant chance of running into Merle or Magnus there, it wasn’t even a gay bar.

He stood on the sidewalk, bag slung over his shoulder and hand on one bare hip, peering up at the nearly-unparseable wash of strobing and flashing neon signs lining the street, feeling his mood start to sour. All the bars and clubs he could see had wordy, unwieldy names like “Lorena’s Augment: Bar and Dance” or “The Last True Vodka Abode” or “Hello Gorgeous/Absolute Submission” and he didn’t trust any establishment with so little comprehension of effective branding to be the sort of place where he could reliably find someone he’d actually be interested in fucking.

There was a part of him that was convinced he’d somehow ended up somewhere other than where he’d intended to go. His eyes fell on the battered street sign across the street from him. Despite all odds, it still read **Wuxing Park Avenue**.

Something he couldn’t quite identify itched in the back of his mind as he wandered down the street, glancing into tinted windows and through open doors for a hint of something interesting. Someone whistled after him. He ignored them.

_Wuxing Park_ , he thought again. _Something about a gate._ Something about a gate in an alleyway, he remembered, and a stairwell. Someone he’d gotten kicked out of Nü Fisch with had recommended him a bar, years ago. He couldn’t remember their name, or the bar’s. _He called it something like that sounded like a subway station._

_Just past the intersection. Wuxing Park and-_

“Crown Point,” he blurted out, scanning for it. _Wuxing Park and Crown Point._ Through the glow of the neons, he could faintly see a line of text on a sign two streets down that seemed like it could be a match.

He waited impatiently at the crosswalk as a hot pink stretch auto peeled by, sending up clouds of dust and a few discarded wrappers, and then walked briskly across and further down Wuxing, weaving around drunk and sober passersby.

**Crown Point Promenade** , the sign read. He hurried across another crosswalk, narrowly avoiding being hit by a go-ganger who shouted obscenities after him, and jogged up to the intersection, squinting around at the alleys between the buildings and seeing nothing.

“Fuck,” he muttered. It had been years. It was probably gone, just like everything else he remembered. “Fuck!”

As he turned around to head back to the more densely populated part of Wuxing, his eyes fell on a faded stencil on the concrete wall beside him: **THE WUXING PARK UNDERGROUND**

Beside it was a rusted and peeling iron gate at the mouth of a dimly lit alleyway.

He blinked. On one hand, this absolutely did seem on-brand for a particularly anarchistic gay bar.

On the other hand, this also seemed on-brand for an organ trafficking front.

Behind the gate, someone shifted and reached through to unlatch it, swinging the door out. They were so grey and gaunt as to have been nearly invisible against the concrete walls of the alley, and met his eyes with a disinterested stare. “Coming in?” he asked before inhaling deeply from his nicotine rig.

Down the alleyway, the only source of illumination was a single wall-mounted cage light above a concrete stairwell leading down to a shadowy pair of doors. The light flickered as moths clustered around it, ending weird shadows across the walls and ground and face of the man by the gate.

Taako watched smoke trickle out of his mouth for a moment before answering.

“Yeah,” he said, “sure.”

The walk past him and down the alleyway was surreal in a way Taako hadn’t experienced in a while: his skin prickled as the hair stood up on his arms and the back of his neck. He could dimly hear music filtering through the doors below, but he could also hear the buzz of the light and the insects, and the croaking exhale of the man behind him as he loosed another lungful of smoke into the night air.

He used the wall to guide him as he descended, casting a distrustful eye at the brown metal guide rail, and then he was there, face-to-face with mustard yellow steel double doors that looked like they belonged in a high school gymnasium.

They opened inwards to a curtained hall and the throaty sound of someone singing karaoke. When he pushed past the curtain into the bar itself, he was momentarily stunned.

There was a small wooden stage flanked by white pillars dripping in cheap crystals decorations, and behind it, a deeply concentrated ork on a squat stool bent over a mixing board in the karaoke master’s booth, and behind her, a tiled hallway with a glowing bathroom sign over it. The far wall was lined with booths, some upholstered in ancient-looking brown leather, some in a newer blue vinyl, and beside him, a wooden bar that stretched from the outside wall of the entryway to the very back, where an open doorframe glowed with the lights of the small kitchen beyond.

There was something comforting about the atmosphere of the place, about the sprawling mural of graffiti that covered the walls over the booths, about the patched ceiling and mismatched panelling on the floor. It felt messy. Uncalculated.

He just stood, taking it in for a long moment.

The man on stage was an older human man, golden-brown under his flamingo-themed button-down, singing a pre-Year of Chaos love song to a handful of others in the booths nearby, some singing along, some talking, a couple too deeply engrossed in each other’s mouths to speak or sing.

The woman behind the bar was human as well, but dark-skinned and muscular with narrow, watchful eyes, and at the bar sat only two people: a dwarf woman in a sharply-tailored suit and a tall ork man in a salmon pink polo with long dark hair gathered into a neat ponytail at the nape of his neck.

Someone moved past the open door to the kitchen, but they were gone before he could make them out.

Taako was still squinting at that door when someone touched his shoulder. “Hey.”

He whipped around to look at them, jerking away reflexively, and the speaker raised his hands, palms forward, with a practiced smile. “Hey, hey, it’s okay- I just, uh, I haven’t seen you here before,” he said, stepping closer again. “Call me Romeonova.”

_Human. Decent-looking_ , Taako catalogued, flicking his eyes over him appraisingly. _Clearly a fucking tool, but shit, I’m not here to find a boyfriend._

He composed his face into a sly smile. “Well hey, Romeo. Call me,” he murmured, letting the pause linger like it was meaningful and not just him deciding on his alias for the evening, “Lazerus.”

***

Kravitz squinted at his comm screen, looking back and forth from its glassy surface to the open pages of the manual on his desk. His eyes traced carefully down the list of options laid before him one more time, just in case he’d missed something the last five.

“There is no ‘utility mode’ under the settings tab,” he muttered, staring at the manual accusingly. “Why are you saying there is?”

For its part, the manual did not respond, as it was only paper and ink.

Behind him, the hallway outside his cube was dark and quiet. In the distance, the low hum of the janitorial staff’s cleaning equipment murmured along the floor near the elevators.

***

He wanted to feel good.

He wanted this to feel good.

By all rights, it should have felt good.

Instead, the hands on him felt clammy, the mouth on his felt clumsy, and the dick thrusting into his ass was just sort of moving in and out in a way he could acknowledge but wasn’t especially thrilled by.

He was acutely aware of the unpleasant sensation of the cold tile wall against his back, of the stickiness of a lube-slick hand on his thigh and, most of all, of having someone’s breath hot, humid breath wash over his mouth and cheeks between wet, misaimed kisses.

He hadn’t been especially practiced when it came to fingering, but Taako had told himself it wouldn’t matter because he wasn’t looking to get fingerblasted out of his mind again. Now, as he was being fucked, he found himself coming to an unfortunate realization. _This isn’t what I want. Fuck. This sure as shit ain’t it, Taako._

He manoeuvred an arm between them, disengaging from the kiss. Romeo slowed down and looked at him. “What’s wrong, baby?”

_Christ_ , Taako thought. In the light of how things had turned out, he was somehow less appealing to look at than he had been when they’d met. He found himself noticing minor flaws: scars and wrinkles, crooked teeth, a thousand tiny things that he might’ve called charming only twenty minutes before. “Alright, get off me,” he snapped, pushing him away. “That’s enough of that, homie.”

Romeo staggered back, pants still around his ankles, erection looking weird and cartoonish inside the pale near-yellow material of the condom in a way he had always struggled not to notice, and just watched him, dumbfounded, as he hastily cleaned himself up and fixed his skirt. “What?” he asked, and then moved to intercept as Taako tried to exit the stall. “Hey, hey, what the hell? Come on, baby-”

“Don’t you fucking ‘baby’ me,” Taako snapped, elbowing him in the chest. “Talk about promising when you can’t deliver,” he seethed, holding the stall door closed with a foot as he washed his hands and face and the bare skin of his thighs with water from the sink. Inside the stall, Romeo’s complaints began to take an angry, affronted turn.

Taako ignored him and swept out of the bathroom, picking snarls out of his hair as he beelined for the exit.

As he was reaching for the door, the bartender’s eyes caught his and then hit on something behind him. She frowned.

“What the fuck did I tell you about hookups in the bathroom, Nova?” she snapped, and Taako paused, overcome by his instinctual need to watch drama unfold.

Romeo, hands still on his the last button of his fly, rolled his eyes at her. “Cho, baby, we both know you’re not gonna-”

“Out,” she said brusquely, squaring her shoulders.

“But-”

“You were fucking warned, Nova,” she said, “I have told you again and again and this was the last time. Get your shit and get the fuck out of my bar. Now.”

Taako scuttled out of the way as he grabbed a coat from a hook under the lip of the bar and snarled in his direction before pushing through the curtain towards the door.

When he looked back towards the bar, the bartender was looking at him again.

“Uhh,” he said, “should I-?”

She waved dismissively at him, face softening. “Naw, don’t worry about it. You’re fine. Siddown. Siddown, I’ll get you something,” she ordered. “Everybody’s done dumb shit in our bathroom,” she said wryly as he slid onto the stool at the end of the bar nearest to the door, “it’s just that Nova pulls it every single fucking time he comes in, and when you’ve only got three stalls, you can’t afford to have one of them always occupied. Plus he always makes a goddamn mess of the place. So what can I get you?”

Taako smiled weakly at her, feeling awkward and sulky. “A better lay,” he muttered, and she laughed heartily.

“I don’t know what I can do for you there, but I can mix you something that tastes like sex,” she joked. “What do you say?”

“Sure,” Taako agreed, looking down the bar.

The dwarf was still there, making eyes at the bartender’s back as she worked, as was the ork in the pink polo, but he wasn’t alone anymore.

He was turned away, talking quietly with the person perched on the stool beside his, a curly-haired human twink who was making such a show of how absolutely down to fuck he was that Taako couldn’t imagine why he was still there and not off somewhere else doing exactly that.

The twink giggled and placed a hand on the ork’s forearm flirtatiously. Taako scowled at the pair of them.

The bartender slid something towards him and then followed his gaze. “Look, I gotta tell someone this or I’m not going to be able to handle this: if he doesn’t catch on soon, I’m going to lose my shit,” she whispered conspiratorially.

Taako looked at her, puzzled.

She nodded over at the ork in the pink polo. “I’ve known that guy since high school and he is fucking legendary for not being able to take a hint,” she whispered. “We had a mutual friend who did pretty much everything short of pulling his pants down and sucking his dick in the middle of gym class and it still took him saying ‘I mean I like you as in I want you to fuck me’ for Brad to realize what was going on.”

Taako strangled a burst of laughter, burying his nose in his drink.

“It is fucking unbelievable- there are times he’s come here actually looking to meet someone and still managed not to notice when someone was interested,” she complained.

Taako stared at his back, noting the way his body was still mostly turned into the bar, noting his relaxed posture and the way he barely reacted to being touched. He watched the twink’s smile start to look a little strained as he slid a hand dangerously far up the ork’s thigh without eliciting any obvious response.

“That’s actually,” he murmured, “kind of incredible?”

The bartender shot him a look. “Any fucking second now,” she whispered.

“Hey, uh,” the twink said, voice tilting as he slid off his stool, “I’m gonna get out of here. You’re welcome to come with me, if you want?”

“Oh, bold,” the bartender murmured. “That might actually work.”

“Oh,” the ork said, “I hope you have a good night, then. I think I’m going to stay for another round, but thank you for offering.”

In a moment that could only have been described as akin to a Renaissance painting coming into being, Taako saw everything: beside him, the bartender buried her face in her hands, fingertips digging into the skin of her forehead; on the stage, the mohawked elf with the microphone hit the climax of her song, throwing a hand up as the people in the booths lost their minds; at the end of the bar, the dwarf woman was throwing back the last of her drink, light glinting off the bare ice at the bottom; where he stood, haloed by the light from the kitchen, the twink closed his eyes and visibly gave up, turning his hands out in supplication to fate; and there, in the centre of it all, the ork turned back towards the bar, oblivious to it all.

“Fucking incredible,” Taako murmured as the twink stalked out and the bartender began to quietly scream-laugh into her hands.

“Chopin?” the ork said, searching for and then finding the bartender. “Oh. Are you okay?”

“No! You did it again, Brad,” she shrieked, “you pulled the Brassoon special again! You said you weren’t going to and you fucking did! Why are you like this?!”

Brad, or Brassoon, or whatever the hell his name was, looked momentarily puzzled. “Wait,” he said, starting to look aghast.

He was wearing tortoiseshell browline glasses and had an employee badge tucked into the breast pocket of his shirt, the lanyard of which was still looped around his thick neck.

And his voice, Taako realized, sounded familiar.

As the bartender continued to ream him out for being oblivious, seemingly only half-joking, Taako watched them, trying to place the familiarity. _Have we fucked? No, I’d remember that._

“I thought he was being friendly-” the ork was protesting.

_And he’s not a Regulator or a Reclaimer,_ Taako thought.

“-don’t see why it’s so unreasonable not to assume-”

Something sparked.

_The suit._

“Holy shit,” Taako croaked.

There he was: the suit without the suit. The build was right – even sitting down, it was obvious that he had both the same formidable height and absurdly broad shoulders as the suit did – and that low, even way of speaking was fairly distinctive.

A couple of thoughts clicked into place.

_He’s an ork_ , he thought numbly. _Of course_.

Without really thinking about it, Taako had assumed the suit was a human, because most of the Bureau’s staff were humans. It made sense to him that that was an assumption the suit had wanted to maintain. He knew enough about the politics here to know that people could have some pretty weird opinions on orks.

_Huh,_ he thought, and then, _holy shit, what a fucking nerd._

The bartender, still nearly sobbing with laughter, waved at him. “Back me up here, uhh- hey, what’re your name?”

“Huh?” Taako asked, blindsided. “Ta- Lazerus. Talazerus.” She didn’t seem to notice his stumble, but the suit gave him an odd, inquisitive look. _Damn, he’s actually pretty cute_ , he realized. He wasn’t model material by any means, but he had a very bankable sort of old high school boyfriend energy that his voice promised and his jawline delivered.

“Hey! Back me up here,” the bartender said again.

“Uh, uh, sure, yeah. On what?” Taako stumbled, trying to cover for how distracted he’d been. Judging by the sly look that came into her eyes, he hadn’t been quick enough.

“Stop skulking in the corner,” she demanded suddenly, patting the bar nearer to where the suit was sitting. “Come sit with us.” He started to protest, but then she began sliding his drink away from him down the bar with a wicked look in her eyes. “Brad’s fine with it. Aren’t you, Brad?”

The suit – _Brad, of course his name is fucking Brad_ – blinked and then looked over at him. “Yeah, for sure. You’re more than welcome to sit with me if you want to.”

_Hey, Taako? Time to fucking go. This is so risky and stupid,_ he thought, and then picked up his bag and coat and slid onto the stool next to him anyway.

Brad smiled down at him. It was a little crooked. “Sorry about the, uh,” he started to say, and the bartender snorted.

“What he means is ‘you’re welcome for the free entertainment’,” she said wryly, and then shot him a narrow look. “So, Talazerus- do you mind if I call you Talaz? So what brings you to the Underground tonight?”

_Don’t say you were looking to get fucked_ , he told himself and then opened his mouth and said, just barely remembering to use his affected voice, “Honestly, babe? Just trying to get fucked like everybody else.”

Beside him, Brad inhaled his drink and started coughing uncontrollably.

Across the bar, the bartender briefly closed her eyes and turned her palms up as though thanking some heavenly force for this gift. “I like that,” she said decisively, “I like you, Talaz. I appreciate honesty in a person. Wanna do a shot with me?”

He was absolutely out of his depth and enjoying it far more than he should have been. “Yeah. Sure, babe.”

“What do you want?” she asked him, grinning.

He feigned thinking about it. In reality, he was trying not to be hyperaware of the fact that the suit – _Brad_ – was so close he could feel the heat of his body. “Dealer’s choice,” he said finally.

She gave him a squinty-eyed, genuinely delighted smile that told him pretty definitively that she was beyond pleased to have found a willing participant in her attempt to play wingwoman for her idiot friend. _Holy shit, this is such a stupid idea_.

He watched her pour three shots without finding that an especially surprising development. Brad, on the other hand, seemed sincerely startled to be handed one. “What? Oh, okay,” Brad said amiably, and then clinked shots with him and the bartender obligingly.

It was sweet and cool and unfamiliar. “Damn,” Taako said, looking at the empty glass as though it would reveal its secrets to him, “that’s some- this is really good, babe.”

Beside him, Brad was making a face. Taako watched him out of the corner of his eye as he hurriedly put the shot glass down and immediately took a swig of his beer to wash it down.

He had clean, neatly-trimmed nails, Taako noticed, and he must’ve been clean-shaven that morning, judging by the hint of shadow coming through on his jaw and cheeks. His hair, long as it was, was clearly well-cared for, and his clothes fit him well. _Con: dresses like a nerdass loser. Pro: clearly takes good care of himself. I already know he’s good with his hands, and shit, clothes come off._ He caught himself. _Hey, Taako? What the fuck are you doing?_

Brad was saying something to him. “Huh?”

“I was asking how your day’s been so far,” Brad repeated with a little smile.

_Of course you are_ , Taako thought, biting back a snide comment. “Oh, uh. Could be better,” he mused. “There’s this guy I fooled around with, and I thought, maybe… it was going to go further, y’know, but when I saw him today he was… pretty stiff, and not in the good way.” He twisted his fingers together, mostly to have something to do with them that wasn’t slap himself across the face. _What the hell do you think you’re doing? What happened to laying low, Taako?_

The bartender cooed sympathetically and then moved to help someone who had approached the bar.

Brad gave him a gentle smile. “Well, um,” he said, “I’m sure that has nothing to do with you. Sometimes it just doesn’t happen. There’ll be other people, other opportunities.”

_He’s not even trying to flirt_ , Taako realized, weirdly fascinated. Brad said everything with the comforting flat delivery of a man stating a fact. “You think so?” he baited, looking up at him through his eyelashes.

“Yeah,” he reiterated, “for sure. You’re a very attractive man. I think anyone would be happy to take you home.”

_Fucking incredible._ Taako just gaped at him for a solid three seconds. “Incredible,” he wheezed. “You just- it’s just that you just say things like that and you don’t even mean anything by it. It’s incredible.”

Brad looked taken aback by this. “…Thank you?” Over his shoulder, Taako could see the bartender pretending she wasn’t watching them intently.

“Hey. It’s Brad, right?” Taako said, resting his chin in his palm. Brad met his gaze attentively. “Do you want to take me home?”

He saw the exact second Brad clued in to what was happening. It coincided with the bartender whooping triumphantly and high-fiving the dwarf at the end of the bar. _Fuck it_ , he thought. _Just fuck it._

“Oh,” Brad said, “Oh. Um. Yes. Is that an invitation?”

“It absolutely is, babe,” he hummed, “but there is a catch.”

Brad raised his eyebrows. “Okay. Can I ask what?”

_Fuck it._

“We’ve met, homie,” he drawled, dispelling the illusion and dropping the affected accent.

Brad visibly jumped, his knees bashing into the underside of the bar with enough force to send his beer into a tottering spin. “Taako?”

“Yep,” Taako confirmed.

“What are you- why are you here?” Brad asked. He looked nervous but was not, Taako noted with some interest, leaning away or moving to leave.

“I told you,” Taako answered, “I fooled around with this dude a bit and then he got weird on me, so I decided to get my rocks off somewhere else. That wasn’t a lie, my dude. Some kind of coincidence running into each other here, huh?”

There was something transcendent about being able to see, up close and in high-definition, with no mask between them, the moment Brad put it together that he had been talking about him. His face did something funny. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Swallowed.

Very quietly went, “oh. Huh.”

The bartender was looking between them with a weird expression. “You looked different a second ago,” she said first, and then, as she moved closer, “wait. Holy shit. You’re Taako! _The_ Taako!”

Taako shrugged as everyone at the bar turned their attention to him, the dwarf and bartender with open amazement, Brad with a startled look.

“Do you two know each other?” he asked, eyebrows furrowing.

The bartender shot him a withering look. “This is Taako, you know, from TV? From _Sizzle It Up With Taako_!” she insisted.  

Brad’s expression suggested that something about this had made sense of something for him, but it wasn’t clear what. “Oh.”

“So? How about it, Brad?” Taako hummed.

Brad looked lost. “How about what?”

“Fuckin’ incredible,” Taako murmured. “Do you still want to fuck me or are you going to get weird and start talking about spreadsheets again?”

In the periphery of his vision, he could see the bartender and the dwarf at the end of the bar both trying to encourage him to go for it without interrupting. Brad, for his part, seemed tongue-tied.

“I- uh,” he said, nervously running hand through his hair and accidentally ruining his neat ponytail. “Huh. I mean,” he said, “we’re not at work, so I guess that’s not an issue. Hm.”

Taako stifled a snort. “So?”

Brad opened his mouth again. Closed it. “Well, uh,” he said, “if you’re asking.”

“And if I am?” Taako purred, leaning in.

“Then… sure. Okay. Yeah,” Brad said. _Holy shit._

Taako took the opportunity to slide off his stool and into Brad’s lap. “So let’s get out of here, then,” he murmured, winding his arms around Brad’s neck. “Unless you wanna fuck in the bathroom and get kicked out, my dude?”

The bartender barked with the sort of shrill laughter specific to someone who had no idea how to respond to meeting a celebrity. Brad didn’t even seem to notice.

“Okay,” he said, big hands cautiously coming in to rest on Taako’s waist, almost as though he still couldn’t believe what was happening.

Taako raised his eyebrows. “So you do want to fuck in the bathroom and get kicked out?”

“What? No,” Brad said, “no, let’s- should we-?”

And then Taako kissed him, half out of the desire to and half because he had the feeling Brad was going to say something stupid.

***

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> C:/shadowrunfacts.exe/
> 
> > nutrisoy: cheap processed soy shit. basically tofu but worse  
> > drek: shit, crap. feel like you got this one from context tbh  
> > crash 2.0: a cataclysmic worldwide event which fucked up the wired matrix real fucking bad  
> > analog: pre-crash 2.0 everything plugged in. most shit is currently wireless but, just like in real life, you can always find people using old analog stuff, especially people who can’t afford anything but old tech (see: deckhead/chiphead)  
> > arctic: fine, good  
> > stars: functionally the police. refers specifically to Lone Star Security but can be used generically  
> > chummer: lmao this is literally just like ‘bud’ or ‘buddy’  
> > year of chaos: 2011, the year the world in shadowrun went from urban to urban fantasy. lmao
> 
> > SE: okay this one is me, it’s military terminology and it stands for ‘scorched earth’. it refers to removing (usually by destroying) all useful resources in an area to fuck over an enemy. some fucked up shit my dudes  
> > argyria: lmao this is silver poisoning. turns you blue
> 
> i wrote “salmon pink polo” and then got so fucking angry at myself and brad. fucking brad


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> shit gets dirty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sup fam, you miss me

The thought came to him, unbidden, as he continued to struggle with his new comms unit.

 _I should check in on Taako_.

He didn’t really have an excuse to, but it had been a couple of days. It would probably be prudent to look like he was trying to do his job.

Kravitz tapped his thumb against the side of his comm absentmindedly, accidentally opening one application and then closing another.

He looked at it.

It was an area mapping application. It seemed to think he was floating in a grey void. A small prompt had appeared on screen over the arrow-shaped icon he assumed was meant to represent his position.

**We can’t find you! Turn on your GPS for an improved experience with this application.**

He dismissed the prompt with a snort.

***

He couldn’t stop looking at him.

After they’d stepped out of the Underground, he’d turned to look at Taako and found yet another and entirely different person standing beside him: not Talazerus or Taako but, he had been informed, Mynthe the Mantis, a pale-eyed human with shockingly red hair and leather pants that left little to the imagination.

“You wanna take a picture, my man?” Taako-as-Mynthe asked him.

“Huh?” he asked reflexively. “Oh, uh- no. I’ve just never, um, had a chance to talk to someone who can do… what you do.”

This was not, strictly speaking, true, nor was it untrue. Brad had a very intimate relationship with another magic user, but they were not a person he was in a position to ask many questions of.

“Oh, I gotcha,” Taako purred, looking sidelong at him with a little smile. “So what do you wanna know?”

“Anything,” he said honestly.

“Bit too general, my man,” Taako complained. It looked like he was starting to lose interest in the conversation.

“When did you realize?” Brad blurted, a little too desperate, a little too eager. “That you were, uh-”

Taako, for his part, gave him a long, funny look but didn’t seem to think too much of it. “A fuckin’ wizard? Pretty young,” he yawned.

“Was it hard to hide?” Brad whispered, glancing around to make sure no one was listening. “Did anybody ever find out?”

As quick as if it, too, had happened by magic, Taako shifted from one reaction to another entirely: in one moment, he was squinting up at him with his lip curled contemptuously; in the next, a haunted look had smoothed out his expression, almost as though he had suddenly remembered something he wished he hadn’t.

The look that came into his eyes was completely alien. “Um. Cha boy didn’t have to,” he said distantly, looking away.

Brad stared at the side of his face, uncomprehending. “Didn’t have to…?”

“Hide,” Taako clarified. His tongue darted out over his lips. Brad watched his throat bob as he swallowed. He didn’t have a chance to speak before Taako continued. “Hey, uhh, no offense but this place really is the fucking pits,” he said, voice heavy with a certain quiet viciousness. “Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever been somewhere that sucks as bad as this one, and I’ve been a lot of shitty places, my guy.”

“What?” Brad asked, startled, blinking and sweeping his gaze over the length of the empty street before catching on. “Oh. You mean the Provincial Union? No, that’s- it’s not all bad.” He could feel an awkward distance yawning between them. “Where are you from?”

Taako turned and looked at him, or maybe through him, with those faraway eyes, slowing and then stopping. The shoelace on his left boot had come undone, Brad noticed. “Bubbeleh? You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you,” he said with a small, secretive smile.

Brad gestured clumsily to Taako’s untied shoe. Taako glanced down at it and then back up at him, apparently unperturbed.

Brad hesitated, sighed, and then squatted down to tie it himself, reasoning that Taako tripping and hurting himself would probably put a damper on their whole evening. “Hm. You never know,” he said sensibly. “Try me.” He felt something brush his cheek and had the singularly strange realization that it was Taako’s skirt, rendered invisible but not immaterial by his illusion.

A prickle of pleasure crept down his spine as Taako pushed a hand into his hair, fingernails skimming his scalp. He could feel that his ponytail was askew as he looked up.

Even pale-eyed and haloed in illusory red hair, even with all the points and angles of his elfishness softened and erased, something about what his face was doing in that instant was pure Taako.

The night was still and breathless and, for a rare moment, silent. Looking down at him from beneath the strange weight of a starless blue velvet sky, Taako smiled slyly and said, “I mean, when you agreed to take me home, I thought you’d caught on that ‘trying you’ was kind of the whole idea, my man.”

Brad wanted to touch him.

 _Steady, Brad,_ he thought reflexively before realizing, with a thrill, that he didn’t need to. He was, all at once, acutely aware of being almost between Taako’s legs; of the way Taako stood with his hips tilted forward, like he was daring him to do something about it; of the fact that, no matter how convincingly those pants seemed to bend and creak as Taako shifted his weight from one foot to the other, nothing but a few thin folds of fabric prevented him from doing something truly irresponsible.

“That’s an invitation, right?” Brad murmured, and Taako quirked an eyebrow at him.

“Uh. What? Yeah, obviously, what else would it be-” Taako started to say, voice going thin and high as Brad, feeling giddy and impulsive, pressed his mouth against the soft, bare skin of Taako’s inner thigh. It was cool and pliant. “Uh? Oh. Sure. Yeah, okay-”

“Okay?” Brad parroted inquisitively, glancing up when Taako grabbed his shoulder to steady himself.

_Oh no. This is bad._

Taako was biting his lip, face starting to flush, breathing shaky. When he started glancing around at the surrounding alleyways, Brad could see with almost prophetic clarity exactly how his evening was about to go awry.

He straightened up so fast his knees popped almost in unison, taking Taako’s face in his hands and kissing him before he could do more than open his mouth to speak. “Let’s get a hotel room,” he said, trying to ignore how insistently his body was trying to remind him that he was, in fact, in possession of a dick, and one that didn’t always share his opinions on what was and was not appropriate.

Taako kissed him back, his mouth warm and wet and coaxing, and Brad felt when his hands crept around his waist and started working at untucking his carefully tucked polo. “Or, uh, we could just-”

 _Jesus Christ,_ Brad thought, carefully intercepting one of Taako’s hands when it tried to slip under his shirt. “No. No! We’re not having sex behind a dumpster,” he said, voice low but firm, and started walking clumsily backwards towards a capsule hotel he thought he remembered passing. Taako laughed and started following, fingers ticklish against his bare skin.

“Okay, but hear me out,” Taako purred, “we could, though-”

“No,” he said again, more sternly than he’d meant to.

Taako’s smile faded. “Huh.” He crossed his arms over his chest and stopped walking. “Huh. Okay. I mean, you’re the one who started shit in the middle of the street, so-”

“Christ help me,” Brad groaned, taking the calculated risk of getting close enough to kiss Taako with what he desperately hoped was an adequately persuasive amount of tongue. “Taako. Hear me out, please,” he bargained, kissing him again when he tried to interrupt. “Anything you want. Anything you want, Taako, but only if we get a room first. I’m going to be… um, uncomfortably frank with you: there are an embarrassing number of things I’m willing to compromise on to make this happen,” he admitted, trying to ignore the way Taako’s eyebrows shot up at that. “But I’m not a shadowrunner. I’m just a regular guy. I don’t really like taking risks if I don’t have to, and if I can avoid having to tonight and still make this happen, that’s a best-case scenario for me. Anything you want, as long as we have privacy, alright?”

Taako paused, looking at him sidelong. “…Anything?” he asked.

Brad hesitated in a way that felt very obvious. “Within reason,” he clarified nervously, and Taako snorted.

“Huh. Weird. Why do I get the feeling your idea of ‘within reason’ and mine are probably, uhh, kinda different?” Taako drawled. He was clearly unimpressed with how things were going, but he also wasn’t trying to leave.

 _Don’t blow this, Brad_ , he told himself. “I don’t know,” he said, running his hands over Taako’s shoulders, “but there’s only one way to find out how far in over my head I’m getting myself, right?”

He knew he’d made the right move as soon as he said it. Taako’s displeased, slightly sullen expression broke. He laughed, clearly caught off-guard. “Okay,” Taako said, snorting but starting to smile. “Yeah, okay, that was slick, bubbeleh. You know how to put out fires, Taako’ll give you that.”

Brad leaned in and kissed him, running his fingers up the back of his neck as he tried to gauge how much damage control he still had to do. “There are a lot of other things I know how to do that you’d enjoy a lot more,” he said quietly, knowing it was a gamble, “if you’re willing to stick around and find out.”

He couldn’t quite decide what Taako’s face was doing, and for a long, terrible moment, he thought he’d blown it.

And then Taako croaked out an incredulous, “holy shit,” and he realized that he couldn’t parse what Taako’s face was doing because what Taako’s face was doing was being utterly blindsided and dumbstruck. “Holy shit! Wait, what the fuck? You obviously know how to pull ass when you need to,” he accused.

Brad laughed. “I don’t usually know when I can, and I only need to when I screw up,” he joked, cautiously pulling Taako against him. “Is it working?”

Taako squinted at him. “A few less hang-ups about where you fuck and you might be balls deep in my ass already, Brad,” Taako complained. “Are we getting a room or what?”

***

 _Something pleasurable,_ Kravitz thought, peering into Taako’s fridge with a frown.

He figured he might as well make an earnest effort to fulfil his promise to his Queen while he waited for Taako to return from wherever he’d gone off to, but his efforts thus far had only succeeded in making one thing very clear: it wasn’t that he’d forgotten how to indulge.

It was something he’d always been bad at.

His food-related bad habits, for example, had always been related to forgetting to eat rather than the alternative, and as he pointlessly opened and closed crisper drawers for the third time with no success, he wondered if his moderate nature in life had doomed him to an afterlife of absolute ambivalence.

He knew it wasn’t typical: his colleagues’ eccentricities proved that much.

He knew, objectively, that most of their idiosyncrasies were either deeply irritating or markedly distressing to the population at large. He also knew they were instrumental to keeping them sane.

He went through the crisper drawers a fourth time.

 _Something pleasurable,_ he thought again, frowning.

***

The gaps between the “hell yeah” and the hookup were always the weirdest, and as Taako sat down in the capsule and started unlacing his shoes, he knew tonight was no exception.

Brad smiled as he stooped into the capsule and closed the door behind him. “I always forget how small these things are,” he admitted, shuffling over to the edge of the bed to strip off his shoes and socks. Even sitting, the ceiling was low enough that he seemed to run the risk of hitting his head if he straightened up too quickly.

Taako eyed him appraisingly, remembering the way he’d soured on Romeonova and wondering if he was setting himself for round two of disappointment. “Yuh-huh, because when I hear ‘capsule’, I think multi-room luxury suite,” he answered.

Brad shook his head, still smiling, and then stripped off his shirt.

Under the pink polo, Brad was unaugmented, which wasn’t unusual. He had the muscularity of a lifelong hobbyist, not an adept or a gym rat: he was slightly soft around the stomach in a way that suggested he probably ate well but ate what he wanted, and his shoulders and back had the sort of definition that suggested a lot of lifting and carrying rather than combat readiness.

Something about Brad had been itching at the back of his mind since they’d met in the bar, and now, watching Brad ball up his socks and tuck them in his shoes for safekeeping, he realized what it was: Brad was about only ten years and one kid off fully becoming the hot single dad at the company barbeque.

He had the weight to physically dominate, but was too good-natured to do it to someone who hadn’t asked him to, and it was easy to tell he’d age well: he was clean and put-together enough to comfortably identify as a person with a solid grasp of basic life skills.

Brad was looking at him inquisitively. “Everything alright, Taako?”

Taako realized he was still sitting on the floor with one boot off. “My man, if you’re even a halfway decent fuck, you’re going to be absolutely fucking drowning in ass the second time starts uglying up the other desk jockeys,” he said cynically.

Brad just blinked, and then his eyebrows furrowed. “Um. Thank you?” A beat. “I generally try to aim higher than ‘halfway decent’-” he protested, and Taako grinned.

“Okay, homie. Prove it,” he baited, kicking off his other boot and flopping backwards on the bed. “Don’t get my hopes up if you’re not aiming to earn a five-star review.”

Brad laughed and reached for him, sneaking an arm under his waist and pulling him close. “I didn’t realize I was taking home a critic,” he joked, and then flinched as Taako pulled the elastic out of his hair a little too roughly. “It’ll get tangled-”

Taako rolled his eyes and lay back as Brad pushed a hand into his hair at the top of his head with a frown, pulling the bulk of it to the left to keep it from falling in his face. Silhouetted by the dim overhead lights of the capsule, he looked good. Powerful, even, in a way made Taako’s skin prickle. “Well… shit, Brad. You should probably ditch the 2020s low-pony look, huh?”

Brad, still trying to navigate a whole lot of very long and unrestrained hair, just shrugged. “It gets tangled.”

“It’s hair, homes,” Taako countered, sneaking his own hands in and just generally making a nuisance of himself, “that’s what it’s for: looking great and being a huge fucking pain in the ass. And you’ve got some pretty great hair, gotta say.”

He could hear Brad’s smile in his voice. The warmth of his breath made Taako shiver. “Thanks.”

Taako startled as Brad slid a hand under his shirt, exploring his spine with unexpectedly calloused fingers.

“I think you should take this off,” Brad murmured. “Or I can, if you want.” He made a motion to lift it over Taako’s head and then laughed when Taako pulled it off and whipped it across the room so hard it hit the wall of the capsule and popped open a hidden bank of USB-R ports. “Do you mind dropping the, uh- the Mynthe look?”

For a second, Taako didn’t understand what he was talking about, and then he realized the hair drifting into his vision was still vibrantly red. He felt drain tug at him as he dropped the illusion. “Oops.”

“Hey,” Brad said warmly, like he’d just emerged from hiding rather than from behind a disguise. “There you are.”

“Happy to be here, my man, thanks for having me,” Taako answered, knowing he sounded a little too much like he was about to get fucked in the ratings rather than about to get fucked in the ass in a much more literal sense.

“I’m very happy to have you,” Brad said flirtatiously, squeezing Taako’s ass with a big hand and laughing at the yelp it got him.

“Your first celebrity guest,” Taako joked, or tried to, as Brad maneuvered him further back on the bed, positioned himself between his thighs, and ran a hand up his naked torso appreciatively.

Taako was starting to suspect that despite whatever issue it was Brad seemed to have picking someone up, it did not extend to not knowing what to do once he had them.

As Brad leaned in to kiss him, pressing the length of his still-clothed erection against Taako’s naked ass in a way that was too teasing not to be intentional, he started to suspect that the one who was out of his depth here wasn’t, in fact, Brad at all.

“I noticed you’re not wearing underwear,” Brad commented with a little smile.

“I did say I came out to get fucked,” Taako countered, gasping and twitching as Brad started drawing circles around his asshole with a fingertip, stroking him from with root to tip with his other hand.

“It feels a little like you already have,” Brad said wryly.

“Yeah, well,” Taako snapped, biting back a whine as Brad started applying pressure with his finger, pushing but not penetrating, “that was a bust, okay, don’t get worked up about it-”

Brad hummed and kissed his throat. “I’m not,” he said breezily, sitting up to fish lubricant out of a compartment under the bed. The sound of the dispenser popping open was somehow incredibly lewd. He glanced at Taako for a second, eyes narrowed. “Is it weird if I say it actually turns me on a little?”

Taako felt his eyebrow rising. “I mean,” he said, “whatever fuckin’ gets you there, I guess? There’re weirder things, for sure.”

Brad smiled warmly at him and pressed a fingertip into his asshole, forcing him to stifle a shrill gasp as his loose, wet, recently-fucked state made it slide in far deeper and faster than Brad had clearly intended, nearly past the second knuckle.

Brad, to his credit, looked both surprised and apologetic. “Sorry! I didn’t think- uh, sorry,” he muttered, cautiously beginning to thrust his finger in and out of Taako with slow, rhythmic motions. “Is this okay?’

It was as though being penetrated had breached some other thin membrane in Taako’s body: his nerves buzzed like wires beneath his skin. _I need this. I need to get fucked so bad_ , he thought desperately, and nodded silently, grabbing Brad’s arm with a little gasp as he pressed a second finger in.

_-need to get fucked, fuck me hard, I wanna forget-_

“Hey,” he gasped, “you said anything, right?”

“Hm?” Brad answered, and then, “within reason.”

“Fuck me from behind,” Taako demanded, and then something strange happened.

Brad hesitated.

Even without factoring in the ambiguous leverage he’d gained, nowhere in Taako’s mind had he considered the possibility Brad might refuse. It wasn’t a request anyone had ever refused him.

But Brad hesitated, fingers slowing, and looked at him with a slight frown. Taako shivered and bit down a high moan as his other hand faltered in its stroking, thumb still pressed against his frenulum.

Taako stared at him as he tried to scrape his wits back together. “You can’t be seriously be about to tell me ‘within reason’ doesn’t include doggystyle,” he objected, hearing his own voice come out weird and creaky with disbelief.

“No, of course not. It’s not that,” Brad said immediately, eyebrows furrowing. “It’s just-”

Taako waited for the rest of the sentence, but it didn’t come. Instead, Brad looked down and went back to what he had been doing, eyebrows still furrowed. The desperate babble in his head – _fuck me, oh god, hurry up and fuck me already_ – started to grow again and Taako reached down and grabbed blindly between his legs, digging his fingernails into the back of Brad’s hands to make him stop. “It’s just… what, homie? What’s the fucking issue?”

Brad looked at him again, mouth moving like he was chewing something particularly tough and unpleasant. “It’s not that I don’t think you’d look amazing from behind, Taako,” he said after a moment, voice a little subdued, “but if we’re only spending one night together, I’d rather not spend it staring at your back.”

It really was unexpectedly very sweet, but the sweetness of it wasn’t what stopped Taako cold.

While it didn’t feel disingenuous – he believed without hesitation that Brad genuinely meant what he was saying – it also felt somehow calculated, like Brad was working an angle on him he hadn’t quite caught onto yet.

Brad wasn’t just being cute: Brad was being Cute. Taako had met enough Faces to differentiate the two.

It was this thought that made the runner in him reconsider his instinct to argue and bargain and instead go,

“Well, shit. Okay. Fuckin’ have it your way, then,”

something which very clearly caught Brad very, very off-guard.

“What?” he said.

“I said have it your way,” Taako repeated, scrutinizing him. “What, is that a problem, too?”

Brad blinked. “No,” he said, and then kissed Taako’s knee. “No, I just- I just wasn’t expecting you to agree,” he admitted.

Taako pinched the back of one of his hands as he let it go. “Well, if we’re gonna fuck, my man, you’re not gonna get there sitting around with your fingers in my ass,” he mocked.

Brad kissed his knee again, looked at him sidelong, and then stroked him root to tip with one hand and curled his fingers into Taako’s prostate with the other, making him gasp and squirm until he reached out and grabbed a fistful of Brad’s hair. Even without pulling it, it was clear he had Brad’s full attention. “Uh-”

“If you’re going to fuck me,” Taako panted, snarling, “then hurry up and fuck me-”

Whether out of eagerness to oblige or a desire not to provoke Taako further, Brad fumbled a little pushing his third finger in, and Taako let out a noise that was almost a yell as he started to work him open.

Someone pounded on the wall, complaining unintelligibly.

“Fuck me,” Taako begged, and Brad surged forward, letting go of his erection to push his hair back from his face as he kissed him. Taako writhed breathlessly as Brad curled his fingers against his prostate again, biting warningly at Brad’s lip. “Hurry up and fuck me!”

Almost as though he were pathologically compelled to tempt fate, Brad snuck another kiss before gently working his fingers loose. “Uh, we need a condom-” he started to say.

Wound up and shaky and very impatient, Taako scrabbled open the button and zipper to Brad’s pants as he rifled through the capsule drawers, yanking both his underwear and pants down to his knees at once.

“Damn!” he said appreciatively. “Damn.”

Even at a glance, it was easy to tell Brad’s dick had a nice solid weight to it just from the way it bounced as he pulled the underwear away. It curved a little to the left, and just beneath the flushed, thick head, he could see a prominent vein flickering with Brad’s pulse. 

Purely on impulse, he squirmed into a sitting position and slid it into his mouth.

There was something deeply satisfying about the way Brad hissed in a breath between his teeth. Looking up at him as he moved his head in a long, slow, teasing suck, he saw Brad struggling not to let his eyes drift over to him as he continued to fumble in the drawers beneath the bed.

 _Look at me, you long-haired idiot_ , Taako thought spitefully as he relaxed his throat and pushed the head of Brad’s cock into it. Brad stopped completely to stare at him, and he hummed with tense, teary-eyed satisfaction.

It was as though Brad had been struck by lightning: the hum in Taako’s throat seemed to tear through him like electricity, causing all his muscles to seize. Taako heard Brad’s head hit the ceiling of the capsule right before a hand pushed shoved his face away, pulling Brad’s cock out of his mouth so fast and so unexpectedly that it sent him into a fit of coughing.

Once he’d regained his breath, he raised his head with the intention of complaining, and instantly forgot why it was he’d wanted to in the first place.

Brad, jaw tight, still flinching a little, was sitting with his forehead pressed hard against the ceiling of the capsule, one hand flat against the smooth white plastic beside it. His hair fell in a dark, messy cascade over his heaving chest, and between his legs, the other hand held the base of his erection in a restrictively tight circle between finger and thumb.

A generous amount of pre-come had welled up over the head of his dick. Taako watched, fascinated, as a drop hung pendulously and then fell onto the sheets, forming a small dark spot.

“You look hot as hell right now,” Taako said, too taken with the image to hide his appreciation.

He could hear how unsteady Brad’s breathing was in his voice. “Give me a minute.”                    

 _Fuck, wow, fuck me_ , Taako thought, biting his lip and squirming onto his back again. He drew his legs up to his chest and wrapped an arm around them, sliding his free hand between his legs to graze his fingers over an asshole that was very insistent on reminding him of how empty it was.

He realized Brad was watching him when he heard him groan and mumble, “oh Christ,” to the ceiling.

He waited for Brad to peek over at him again, grinned, and pressed his fingers into his asshole with a soft whine, maintaining eye contact as he did it.

“Jesus Christ,” Brad repeated, stroking himself with him a pained expression, almost as if for relief. “Has anyone ever told you you’re a menace?”

He laughed at that. He couldn’t help himself. “All the time,” he answered cheerfully, reaching out to tug at the hand Brad was using to stroke himself. “Help Taako out, he’s only got two hands.”

As Taako guided his hand to his left thigh so he could hold his right back and spread his legs while he fingered himself, Brad groaned from somewhere so deep in his chest it sounded like it had to hurt.

Taako watched him as he turned away from the ceiling and towards him, and felt when Brad cupped the hand between his legs. He nearly shrieked when a thick finger pressed in alongside his own.

Brad leaned in close as though to kiss him, but instead, said, “just give me- give me a minute to get a condom on, okay? Just- just one minute, Taako,” and then pulled away.

“I dunno, you could always raw me,” Taako teased.

Brad closed his eyes, inhaling sharply through his nose, and then continued as though Taako hadn’t spoken.

“Cha boy’s curious how long you could keep it together going raw in my ass if that’s what a little deepthroating does to you,” he baited, using the wet squelch of his own thrusting fingers as obscene emphasis, and Brad made a sound that actually might have been a strangled scream and continued, painfully methodically, to pick through the drawers beneath the bed.

 “What if I just started sucking your dick again,” Taako mused, faux-thoughtful as he curled his fingers farther than he’d meant to and accidentally interrupted himself with a breathy gasp, “make this a into timed challenge, huh?”

He only realized Brad had, in fact, found the hotel condoms and was actually in the process of putting one on when he whipped out a hand, pressing his thumb to Taako’s lip, and stared at him with hair falling into his face and a wild, inscrutable look in his eyes.

“Hey, Taako?” he said, voice surprisingly even for how viciously hard he was.

Taako blinked, a little startled. “Uh. Yeah?” Just for a moment, Brad’s thumb pressed further, between his parted teeth, before retreating. 

“Please don’t take this the wrong way,” Brad said, and the waver had begun to creep back into his voice, the taut-bowstring tension of a someone so unconscionably horny that he was rapidly approaching the point of not knowing what to do with himself, “but I need to you shut up.”

Taako smiled at him mischievously. “So shut me up, then.”

There was a moment where the look on Brad’s face made him question for a moment if they were about to have sex or get into an honest-to-god fistfight, and then Brad buried a hand in his hair, kissed him fiercely, and pulled Taako’s hand out from between his legs.

The sensation of Brad’s cock pressing into him was both so welcome and so long-awaited that he couldn’t prevent the loud, gasping curse that forced its way out of his mouth.

With how mercilessly he’d needled him, he expected Brad to pound him, to lay into his ass with the punishing sexual fervency typical to someone working out the potent cocktail of emotions that was blistering arousal and maddening frustration, and while the first few thrusts seem to support that theory, that wasn’t what happened.

Instead, his thrusts evened out, became rhythmic, long, deep, and slow, like he was trying to fuck Taako into seeing the light instead of exorcising him from all responsibility for his body like he craved.

It felt good. It felt incredibly, almost offensively good.

It wasn’t what he wanted.

“Pound me,” he demanded desperately, clawing at Brad’s back as his mouth explored the corner of his jaw, the line of his neck. “You need to pound me-”

“Do I?” Brad murmured, and worried experimentally at the shell of his ear.

“You fucking said- you said- so much for ‘anything I want’, huh?” he protested, gasping as Brad pulled nearly all the way out, too slow not to feel every ripple and ridge, before thrusting into him again.

“If I go fast with you, I’ll never get the chance to go slow,” Brad murmured, kissing the area under his jaw. Taako didn’t like how much control he seemed to have over the shakiness in his voice. “And if I’m rough, I’ll never get the chance to be gentle.”

“Wha- I don’t- fuckin’ next time, then!” Taako snapped, “you can do your gentle shit next time-”

Brad was smiling at him. “Can I hold you to that?”

The words were almost out of his mouth, pressed hard against the back of his teeth, when he realized he knew what Brad’s gambit was.

Brad slowed, his smile fading uncertainly as Taako stared at him, genuinely floored. “Uh-”

Now that he saw it, it was obvious. The reason he hadn’t seen it before was because while he was familiar with people trying to score a second date with him, no one had ever been ballsy enough to try to pull off a stunt quite as unbelievable as trying to score a second date with him while also balls-deep in his ass. If someone had presented him the idea an hour before, he would’ve written it off as something no one was stupid enough to try.

“Holy shit,” he croaked.

Brad’s smile was starting to look a little awkward. He was still thrusting, but in the cursory, distracted way of someone whose body was still focused on one thing while his mind had found itself unexpectedly preoccupied with something else. “Is something wrong, Taako?”

“You want the truth, my man? I’m trying to figure out if I should be impressed or kick your fucking ass,” he hissed, shaking his head in amazement. “For a loser from Accounting, you’ve sure got some fuckin’ balls on you!”

Brad, at this point, was starting to look less awkward and more nervous, and stopped moving completely, pushing himself into a partially upright position. “I’m not from- you know what, that’s not important right now. What’s going on? I don’t know what I did, but I’m sorry-”

“Oh? Oh, so you weren’t trying to scam a round two out of me? That’s Taako’s mistake, huh?”

Even if he hadn’t said anything, Brad’s expression made it very clear that he did, in fact, know what he did. “Oh. Uh.” His smile was starting to take on a distinctly chagrined aspect. “So that’s a no, then?”

Taako stared at him for a long time, at his long dark hair and browline glasses and strong-jawed, unassumingly handsome face. He stared for long enough that he could tell when Brad became acutely aware of the fact that he was still very much inside Taako despite the tense situation and started to question if he should change that.

“You keep saying you’re not a shadowrunner, but you know what?” Taako said, finally, reaching up to curl a hand around the back of Brad’s neck in a way that clearly made him very nervous. “You’d make a fucking great shadowrunner. This is the wildest shit anyone has ever tried to pull on me, and- hey? Hey, Brad? It might’ve worked. That’s ballsy as hell.”

Brad’s expression was a unique cocktail of regret: on one hand, he clearly recognized that this had gone handily off the rails and his best bet was to exit stage left as quickly and quietly as possible, hopefully not pursued by twink.

On the other, it was clearly beginning to drawn on him that even if Taako was no longer a shadowrunner, he had been before, and therefore had certainly killed several people and could absolutely kill him if he made the wrong move.

He watched Brad’s throat bob as he swallowed.

“I, um,” Brad mumbled with the crooked smile of a man who hoped for the best but was prepared for the worst, “guess I shouldn’t ask if it’s working, then, huh?”

There was something about it, something about the “well, this sure is a hell of a way to go out” smile and the transparently false bravado behind his joke that absolutely should not have worked but still did, and Taako cracked up.

He curled his other arm around Brad’s neck and kissed him, rolling his hips and feeling Brad inhale sharply as his body remembered why his slowly softening dick had been so hard to begin with.

“Fuck me if I know why, Brad, but yeah: it’s working,” Taako told him.

“Well, um, fucking you really was the hope, so-” Brad joked. It was so immediate and seemingly automatic that it occurred to Taako that making jokes to break the tension might actually be a nervous habit.

Taako pushed Brad’s hair back from his face, running his fingers along his scalp. “Chill, homie. We’re arctic.” He mulled it over, a little reluctant. “You can hold me to next time.”

Watching the evolution of Brad’s expression as he realized that he hadn’t fucked everything up and wasn’t going to die and had, in fact, somehow inexplicably gotten exactly what he’d wanted in the first place was a journey, a destination, and a three-act play.

His smile was entirely too beatific for someone who followed kissing Taako very sweetly on the mouth by rolling his hips into a long, deep thrust that made Taako shake and swear as his body realized it did still have a very respectably large and increasingly hard dick in its ass, actually.

“What do you want me to do?” Brad murmured. “Do you still want it from behind?”

“Suddenly, you’re so- uh-” Taako stuttered and bit down a moan. “-so fucking obliging, huh?” He could feel Brad’s smile against his lips.

“Anything you want,” Brad said, kissing him again.

“Pound me,” Taako demanded, and this time, Brad closed a hand around one of his knees for leverage and drove him into the mattress with enough force to make him wail.

“Like that?” Even over the sounds of their bodies, his own racing pulse, and the gasps and whining dying in his throat, he could tell just from his voice that Brad was fucking himself up just as bad and wasn’t going to last long like this.

“Yuh-huh,” he moaned, grabbing at Brad’s ass like he could help put more force into his thrusts.

Taako could feel, just from how impossibly rigid Brad’s cock was inside him, exactly how dangerously close he was to orgasm, and started to stroke himself in quick, efficient motions, aiming to ride the wave of Brad’s orgasm over his own.

Brad did come first, with a quiet groan, a last few faltering thrusts, and a convulsive tightening of an arm Taako hadn’t even realized had curled around his waist, and then Taako, whose shuddering moan sent an answering shiver through Brad and a brief flicker of renewed hardness into his softening dick as his body reflected on whether or not it really was too old to go again too soon.

It was strangely hypnotic, listening to Brad’s heartbeat slow beneath that broad chest as his breathing evened out, and he was in something like a trance by the time Brad pulled out and kissed him before stripping off and disposing of the condom. The capsule lights dimmed and the bed dipped beside him.

It was a narrow bed, barely big enough for two people of Taako’s size, and Brad’s feet hung off the end in a way that couldn’t possibly be comfortable.

Still, somehow, looking at Brad as he curled him close, Taako wasn’t sure the last time he’d seen someone so wholeheartedly content.

***

Kravitz had some concerns.

He was starting to question whether Taako was coming back.

 _His things are still here,_ he assured himself.

He’d dropped everything and run before. It wouldn’t be the first time.

_We had a deal._

They didn’t. Nothing official. In fact, he wasn’t sure Taako had ever even given him verbal confirmation that he intended to stay put.

_He kissed me back-_

He shied away from that thought with an instinctive urgency before returning to it. It was something he still wasn’t sure why he’d done.

Standing so close, the heat of his breath had eddied over Kravitz’ face as he spoke. He’d looked so warm. So alive.

A strange yearning was stirring in him, slow and sluggish and vague from decades of neglect. He wanted something, but he wasn’t sure what.

 _Hungry_ , his mumbling hindbrain told him, and he clung to that, going through the fridge again.

***

Someone was kissing him.

It wasn’t a lewd kiss, not searching or provocative; it was sweet, even chaste, and tasted faintly of the cheap synthetic mint used in hotel toothpastes.

Taako opened his eyes, bleary and unfocused, to a smiling face he couldn’t immediately identify. “Hey,” he mumbled.

 _Brock? Brad. The suit_ \- chuckled quietly. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, hair pulled back in a neat ponytail, already fully dressed. “Good morning,” he murmured. “I’m going to put my number in your comm before I go, okay?”

Taako hummed and fumbled blindly for it, unlocking the screen without even really looking at it. As Brad fingertips tapped across the screen, blue light reflecting off the lenses of his glasses, Taako snaked a hand around his neck, toying with the collar of his shirt.

“Where’re you going in such a hurry, my man?” he asked.

“I have to go home and change. I can’t go to a company event smelling like beer and sex in yesterday’s clothes,” he said apologetically.

Taako hummed. “Hm. Saturday cookout?” he asked. He’d never bothered to go, but he was familiar with the Bureau’s feeble attempts at building rapport between branches. “You could just not go,” he suggested, running a hand up Brad’s thigh invitingly. “Pretty sure you’d have more fun with me.”

Brad hesitated. Taako could see him hesitating. For a moment, it looked like he was going to agree, and then he sighed.

“I have to. Everyone will notice if I’m not there.”

Taako snorted. “They only notice if branch heads don’t show,” he complained. “Nobody gives a shit if some shmuck from Accounting doesn’t go-”

A funny look crossed Brad’s face. He opened his mouth to say something, paused, and then smiled again. “I’ll see you next time,” he said, and then snuck a kiss before darting away, a little too quick for Taako to take another crack at persuading him.

As the capsule door slid shut, Taako glanced at his comm.

 **Brad (Wuxing Prk UndrGrnd)** , the entry read.

It was surprisingly savvy of him to have assumed Taako would forget who he was, but he’d run out of characters.

Taako snorted and changed it to **‘Next Time’ Brad**.

***

When he snuck back in through the window, Kravitz was ready for him.

He’d made a mistake, letting Taako roam free. He’d been softhearted and the events of the night had made it clear to him just how easily that softheartedness could’ve set him right back to where he’d starting: scouring the feeds for any glimpse of a patched AA suit while his Queen grew more and more inquisitive about how long he was taking to apprehend his target.

He felt her divine force prickle through him as he sealed the window. Taako whirled around, startled, and stared at him.

“Krav-?” he started to ask.

Kravitz gestured to him with his scythe, mouth set. “You’re coming with me,” he told him. “I need you to-” he started, and then reset. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

Taako’s eyes were wide, but he also looked cynical and, oddly enough, a little annoyed. “What?” he asked. “Why? Cree-zus, you make out with a guy once-”

 _Hungry_ , Kravitz’ hindbrain complained, nonsensical.

“I told you to stay here while I investigated your case,” Kravitz told him firmly, approaching. “You weren’t- you didn’t.”

Taako darted through the door to the living room. Kravitz could hear him trying the front door as he followed behind, unhurried. “Don’t make this difficult.”

Taako sent him a scathing look. “I didn’t realize ‘stay here’ meant don’t go anywhere, ever,” he snapped, eyes darting from the door to the kitchen to Kravitz’ scythe. “You want me to starve?”

“It doesn’t take twelve hours to get groceries,” Kravitz said. “I have to assume you were planning your next move. I’m not- it’s nothing personal, Taako.”

Taako was starting to look genuinely panicked. He was required to bring Taako in alive, but he was not required to bring him unharmed, and they both knew it. He felt a twinge in his chest.

“I wasn’t running away!” Taako protested, edging away from him. “Listen, my guy-”

Kravitz set his jaw, readying his scythe. “Come quietly and I won’t have to hurt you.”

Taako surged forward. Kravitz slipped deftly sidewise, intercepting him, and he stumbled back. Kravitz raised his scythe, regretful, and swung.

“I was getting fucked!” Taako babbled, hands raised in front of him defensively. “I wasn’t running-”

Kravitz stopped cold, his blade nearly touching Taako’s shoulder.

There was a long moment where neither of them spoke. The only sounds were the creaking pipes of the building, the traffic outside, and the wicked sizzle and pop of arcane energy crackling along the blade of Kravitz’ scythe.

Taako’s eyes darted frantically from his scythe to his face. He was breathing quickly. His pupils were black pinpricks in his irises.

“…What?” Kravitz asked, baffled.

“I was getting fucked,” Taako repeated, edging away from the scythe and then grimacing as Kravitz followed him with it. His expression must’ve been truly inscrutable, because Taako’s babbling quickened. “You know, getting railed? Pounded? Having fucking sex- look, my man, here in the land of the living some of us have needs and mine was a dick in my ass, okay, I didn’t realize that was a fucking felony-”

He pictured it, inadvertently, as anyone who is actively trying not to picture something inevitably does. He knew, in an approximate sense, what Taako’s warm body felt like against him, had felt his racing pulse and the feverish heat inside his mouth, so it was all too easy to imagine sinking into that heat-

 _Hungry. Hungry?_ his hindbrain insisted, confused, and he had a realization that was as mortifying as it was absurd.

“Oh god,” he muttered, unintentionally letting the blade of his scythe dip. Taako squawked and pressed close to the wall to avoid it.

“Don’t be shitty about it,” Taako snapped, scooting along the wall with his eyes still firmly on Kravitz’ weapon. “It’s not like you volunteered, homie, so you don’t get to complain if I outsourced-”

When Taako faltered, Kravitz realized he’d finally looked over. He had no idea what expression he was making.

He had the thought that he was about to go calcic, but it didn’t happen. As it turned out, crushing embarrassment was not a calcic trigger. Instead, he just stared back at Taako, utterly at a loss.

“Are you… okay, my guy?” Taako asked. He looked mystified. “Hey, uh: I’m pretty jazzed you stopped trying to arrest me for not dying, but what the fuck is this response?”

Kravitz tried to smile. Judging by Taako’s reaction, it was extremely weird.

He knew he needed to say something decisive, make a quick exit, and privately come to terms with whether or not he wanted to pursue this particular Vice. Instead, he just went

“Oh god,”

again and ran a hand over his face.

He’d promised her he’d try, but she’d expect a report. He couldn’t report this.

An emissary’s grounding Vice was unique. It was a fusion of their impulses and interests during life, taken to the extreme: Paolo, the most moderate amongst them, had been a food critic. He’d also suffered from mild obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

Ruriko, by comparison, had been a hairstylist, a textile hobbyist, and a notorious voyeur.

This meant, naturally, that grounding Vices were the source of a lot of running jokes amongst the Queen’s emissaries, and while they all followed the basic format of **have you tried ____** , suggesting everything from yoga to chocolate to a fresh haircut, there was no joke as old or as fondly regarded by his colleagues as

**“Have you tried sex?”**

for the simple fact that it was understood to be something that would never happen, purely because it just wasn’t extreme enough to be an operative’s grounding Vice.

It was too moderate.

Just like him.

He wasn’t sure he had the psychological fortitude to go through with explaining to his goddess that his grounding mortal Vice was, apparently, that he genuinely just really needed to get laid.

He flinched as Taako cautiously waved a hand in front of his face. He had no idea when he’d gotten so close. “Seriously, are you-”

“I think I need to quit my job,” Kravitz told him conversationally, and then dismissed his scythe.

Taako jumped, startled, and then squinted at hm.

“Did you have fun?” Kravitz asked. It was bizarre thing to ask, he knew that, but nothing seemed to matter.

“What? Was what-” Taako’s eyebrows furrowed and then smoothed. “Wait. I mean, yeah. Uhh, thanks for asking…? Hey, are we-”

“Hmm. Good,” he said sagely. “I’m going to stay here for… a while. I don’t want to- I’m not going back to work yet. Please ignore me.”

Taako blinked. “What the fuck is happening? Are we good now?” he muttered. “Hey, uh, you can tell me to ignore you, but it’s gonna be kind of hard for cha boy to just… not notice a smoking hot reaper hanging out in his living room-”

“Please don’t flirt with me right now,” Kravitz requested, unsure how to comport himself and realizing too late that he sounded disconcertingly cheerful as a result.

Taako stared at him.

“My life was a tragedy and my death is a farce,” Kravitz told him.

“That sounds like something a teenager would think is super fucking deep, my man,” Taako answered, hesitantly putting a hand on his arm. “Is this some sort of breakdown or… just normal for you?”

 _Warm._ It was so warm. Even through the fabric of his robe, he could feel the warmth of Taako’s palm.

Kravitz wanted to touch him.

Taako noticed him staring and started to pull his hand back. “Uh, sorry, should I-”

“No,” Kravitz answered immediately. He missed the warmth as soon as it was gone.

“No?” Taako’s hand hovered awkwardly in the air as he stared up at him. “No like… you don’t want me to touch you, right?”

“I don’t not- I do want you to touch me,” Kravitz told him. _Screw it. Why not?_

Taako’s expression was doing something complicated. “Gonna be honest, Krav, you’re giving me some mixed signals here,” he complained. “First you were going to kick my ass and then you said you were crashing on my couch-” He looked so warm, like his beating heart was a small flame inside him. “-you tell me not to flirt with you and then you say you want me to touch you-”

“Can I kiss you?” Kravitz asked.

Taako jolted like he’d been slapped. “What?”

“You can say no,” Kravitz told him, very reasonable.

Taako’s mouth opened, but instead of speaking, he made a thin, incredulous sound. “Uhh, hold up, my man: are you- are you coming on to me right now?”

Kravitz thought about it. “Yes,” he answered decisively.

Taako stared at him. “Well, uh,” he said, “this is fucking wild, but okay. I mean, yeah, I’m down, you’re hot as hell, be my gue-”

A shiver under his fingers; a gasp against his mouth.

It wasn’t enough.

No matter how tightly he held him, it somehow wasn’t enough.

 _Hungry_ , his confused and sluggish hindbrain told him, and while it wasn’t quite right, it also wasn’t wrong. He wanted to devour him and be devoured, all at once: to curl over him like a spider with a fly and consume him; to crawl inside him and be digested into nothing, to be unmade and entombed in the heat of his lungs, heart, brain.

One of Taako’s hands snuck between them, over his mouth and nose.

“-breathe,” Taako gasped, “you need to let me breathe- I’m going to fucking pass out if you keep this up-”

He had Taako nearly trapped between him and the wall. He had no idea how or when that had happened. There was a terrifying fervency to his desire that he barely recognized.  

He felt simultaneously more sane and more insane than he had in decades. _Is this really what being alive felt like?_

Almost without thinking, he took Taako’s hand by the wrist and brought it to his mouth, exploring his palm and fingers with his lips, tongue, teeth.

Taako looked a little like he was on the verge of passing out again.

“Uhh. Wow. Fuck. You’re really fucking- wow. This is, uh,” he wheezed, “definitely the stupidest thing I’ve ever done but, uhh, do you want to-”

Kravitz tried to answer, produced a deeply unsettling rattling sound, and then remembered he had to inhale to produce sound in his organic form on this plane. “Yes.” Taako blinked.

“You don’t even know what I was going to-” he started to say.

“Yes,” Kravitz repeated, kissing him. “It doesn’t matter.”

Taako wormed his hand between their mouths again. “Bedroom?”

“Okay,” Kravitz agreed.

Taako seemed to be expecting something. Kravitz reveled in the flutter of his pulse beneath the thin skin of his wrist while he waited for him to elaborate on what.

“Uh, Krav? You’re, uh,” Taako said, “gonna have to let go of me for a second so we can move-”

He was extremely reluctant. As soon as he let go, he craved the warmth with the viciousness of an addict in withdrawal. They were barely through the door before he’d folded Taako against him again.

Taako squirmed, looking flushed but exasperated. “When I- hold it, hold up, my dude- when I say bedroom I mean,” he said, clumsily gesturing behind him, “bed. Dang but you’re a thirsty one, though-”

Kravitz tried to speak, remembered he had to breathe again. “I don’t need water,” he corrected, reluctantly releasing Taako.

Taako gave him a look that suggested he’d misunderstood something and then crawled onto the bed on his hands and knees.

Kravitz curled over him, unzipping the back of his AA suit to press his mouth to the back of his neck, and Taako seemed to shiver and melt simultaneously.

“Give me- fucking give me a second,” he protested, gasping. “I’m checking if I have condoms-”

Despite his protest, Taako still rocked his hips back, and Kravitz had a realization that probably shouldn’t have felt as strange as it did: he was hard.

He wasn’t sure he could remember the last time he’d had an erection. It might’ve been before he’d died. After he’d been raised, he’d been advised to masturbate regularly if he was intending to have sex with any regularity, but it hadn’t been a priority, so he hadn’t.

He only realized he was grinding against Taako’s ass when the body under him tried to say something, faltered, and then gasped out,

“You’re, uhh, making a pretty compelling case for taking some reaper dick raw in my ass right now, my guy, so if that’s not what you’re after, then maybe-”

It took him a second to parse what that meant. He rattled, remembered to breathe. “Why not?”

He felt a shudder run up Taako’s spine. The look on his face as he looked over his shoulder was strangely despairing.

“Come on,” Taako whined. “Don’t make me be the responsible one- it’s, uhh, for diseases and shit, you know-”

Kravitz explored the exposed skin beneath his AA suit with his lips, tongue, teeth. “I don’t get sick,” he commented idly.

“What?”

“Emissaries don’t get sick,” he repeated, only half his attention on the conversation, the other fixed on the sound Taako made as he grazed his teeth over a small swell of vertebrae just below the nape of his neck. “Our Queen protects us from disease and decay.”

Taako was quiet for long enough that he looked up inquisitively.

Taako was looking back at him with the face of someone who knew he was about to make an irresponsible decision and was choosing to do it anyway. “If this turns out to have been a bad idea,” he said, biting off a moan as Kravitz’ exploring hand started coaxing his suit over his shoulders and down his arms, “it’s your fault-”

Kravitz realized he was smiling. “I can accept that.”

“Okay,” Taako said, suddenly squirming in his arms, “let go of me-” Kravitz begrudgingly let go, and Taako rolled onto his back beneath him to yank free of the top half of his AA suit. “I can’t believe you’re wearing a fucking three-piece suit right now, this is criminal,” he complained.

Kravitz let out a rattling little laugh and kissed him deeply, reveling in the heat of his mouth while Taako pawed open the buttons of his coat, his vest, his shirt. The folds of his robes pooled around him, ensconcing them in a strange sphere of darkness. When he shrugged it off and began to strip away the open layers of his suit, Taako shifted beneath him.

His expression was oddly nervous. “You can- uh, you can keep that on,” he said, not quite meeting Kravitz’ eyes. “I mean, if you want.”

Kravitz quirked an eyebrow. Remembered to inhale. “Do you want me to keep it on?”

He may have lost touch with the mortal realm in a number of ways, but Taako’s expression was fairly transparent.

“I-it’s warm,” Taako stuttered. “Don’t know if you’d noticed this, bubbeleh, but you’re kinda clammy-”

He pulled his robe back on, deciding against commenting on the other reason he suspected Taako had asked. “Sorry,” he mouthed against Taako’s lips, slipping his tongue into that warmth.

Taako’s hands explored his shoulders, his chest, his waist, settled on the button of his pants. Taako inhaled shakily. “Shit! Fuck. You’re hot as hell, Krav,” he said. It sounded a little like a complaint. “I mean, uh, not literally-”

When a hand slipped him out of his underwear, he faltered, moaning soundlessly. Taako’s palm was so warm.

Taako’s eyebrows were knitted as he pushed up against his chest to peer between them. “Okay, homie, this?” he said, stroking Kravitz’ erection from root to tip, “this isn’t fucking fair-” This time it clearly was a complaint.

Kravitz looked at him inquisitively, shuddering from the urge to press closer, from resisting that seemingly unappeasable hunger.

“This is,” Taako accused, “the best-looking dick I have seen in my fucking life, and you’re, what, some kind of dead guy? Anyway, that’s not the problem here, the problem here is that no one but me is allowed to look this good-”

Kravitz pulled his AA suit further down, impatient. “Can I take this off?” he asked between kisses.

Taako squeaked and shivered. “Uh- yeah, sure- just- hey-” He nipped Kravitz’ lip sharply and pushed him back up again. “Again, my guy, that’s kind of hard to do when you’re, uhh, as in my space as you are-”

Kravitz wrinkled his nose unconsciously, weighing how badly he wanted skin-to-skin contact against how reluctant he was to give up the contact he already had, and Taako rolled his eyes so dramatically it felt cartoonish.

“Krav,” he purred, and his palms were gloriously warm on Kravitz’ chest, “Kravitz. Taako’s, like, super flattered by how fucking into this you are, because again: you’re deffo breaking some kind of law looking like that, but he’s gonna need you to, like… chill out a bit, yeah?”

Even as he was thinking about it, he felt himself sucking dry air in through his teeth into indifferent lungs and saying,

“I- hmm. I’ll try. Sorry,”

which earned him a skeptical squint and a huff of laughter that sent warm air eddying over his face.

“Uhh… okay. What the fuck does that mean?” Taako asked him.

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Considered it as he ran a hand up Taako’s chest. “I’m dead,” he said, somewhat conversationally. Taako started to protest and then shivered and gasped as Kravitz ran his nails lightly over his skin. “…Do you need me to stop? I can stop,” he said, somewhat reluctantly.

“I- what? No, I don’t want you to stop or need you to buzz, Krav, you just,” he sputtered, “kinda went straight from trying to get your scythe in me to, uh, trying to ‘get your scythe in me’, if you know what I mean,” he said with a wry suggestiveness.

“I can stop,” Kravitz said again, a little at a loss for what to do. The purgatorial state of being close but not close enough was starting to feel intolerable.

Taako made a deeply exasperated sound and leaned in to kiss him. “Krav,” he sighed, “we’re getting static, so let’s level: I want you to fuck me. Hell yeah. I just… you went from zero to fuckin’ one-hundo-sixty in an instant and I’m having trouble keeping up with your energy, so unless you want cha boy to just lay back and enjoy the ride, you gotta meet him here somewhere in the middle.”

Kravitz carefully considered what he was about to say before he started saying it, something he didn’t do often. “I’m dead,” he repeated, “and when you die you… change in certain ways-”

Taako was giving him a narrow, weird look. “I got it, you’re dead. You lived, you died, now you’re a reaper. Just a quick q, my man: have you not gotten laid since you died?”

“No,” he answered.

Taako’s expression made him wonder if he should’ve kept that to himself. “Okay. Sorry, how long did you say you’ve been dead?”

“A while,” he said evasively.

Taako’s eyebrows rose. “Okay. Uhh, gonna level with you, bubbeleh: cha boy was on a couple years before, now he’s on a couple decades and wondering just how much sexual backlog you’ve got built up- uhh-”

***

The look Kravitz gave him then had exactly the same some sort of blazingly intense sexual energy that had been fucking him up since he’d first pressed him against the wall, and he realized he had no idea what he’d just been saying.

It wasn’t just how unreasonably good-looking Kravitz was, nor was it the fact that Taako’s body was a livewire of sensitivity after a night spent getting pounded into a mattress, though both of these things were true: it was the way Kravitz clearly wanted to absolutely ruin him.

His instincts as a shadowrunner balked at the idea of letting someone so clearly well-equipped to kill him put him into a whining, wordless, defenseless stupor.

 _That’s part of the appeal_ , his brain murmured mischievously, which was the problem.

His instincts as Taako, which went back much further than those of his shadowrunning career, had never been so certain they wanted to be absolutely fucking ruined by someone.

“Y’know what? Fuck it,” he gasped, trying to squirm out of his AA suit with one hand while holding Kravitz back with the other. “Fuck it, fuck me, if I die you can rail me in the afterlife-” He craned his head to the side, trying navigate the tangle of anti-arcane cloth he was caught in.

Kravitz made a sound suspiciously similar to a snort and pressed his mouth to his throat, chest pressing down against the boundary of his hand.

Taako groaned. “Shit! Look, either help me get this shit off or back off a bit-”

Kravitz paused, looked down at the position they were in, and had a moment of such clearly identifiable recognition that Taako knew exactly what he was about to do before he did it.

 _Uh oh_.

Kravitz’ movement were clean, precise, methodical: suit down over the hips, one boot, the corresponding pantleg, other boot, other pantleg, and then the whole thing was gone.

 _Uh oh_ , he thought again, because he should’ve recognized it before. _That golem was a hotsim proxy, huh?_

Kravitz was a decker, and obviously a very good one if he’d been scouted by the Blackwing Conglomerate.

Talented deckers, as varied in personality and appearance as they were, all had one thing in common: they were all pathological button pushers.

Decking required intense focus, fast reflexes, and an ability to adjust to situations that could change from moment-to-moment, which was precisely why so many pro deckers were also competitive gamers. It was also why, at least in Taako’s experience, they tended to be absolute bastards to keep up with in bed.

While a hyper-efficient lover sounded nice in theory, in practice it offered an immediate ultimatum: invest an enormous amount of effort trying to keep pace or get comfortable with the prospect of feeling brainless and overwhelmed.

As Kravitz grazed his teeth over his collarbone, one hand exploring the curvature of his newly bare leg and the other creeping experimentally between them, Taako had no doubt which of the two he was at risk of falling into.

As Kravitz’ fingertips grazed the periphery of his asshole, he shoved his hand between them defensively. “I can- cha boy’s got it, my man, no worries-” he babbled.

Kravitz looked briefly disappointed as he slid his hand over Taako’s inner thigh, coaxing a sharp little gasp out of him. “Oh. Sorry. It’s not- you don’t like it when other people finger you?”

Taako looked apprehensively at his long, dark, elegant fingers. _If he gets even one of those in my ass, he’s going to fucking destroy me,_ he thought, a little hysterical.

“It’s- it’s not that I don’t, it’s just-” he protested, trying to keep his wits together as Kravits explored his body with his hands, teeth, and tongue, cool body pressed close. _Don’t say it, it’ll only encourage him-_

Kravitz looked up at him, the blue neon from the across the street catching the angles of his face through the window, and something critically misfired in Taako’s brain.

“Pretty sure you’re going to make me forget my own name if I let you anywhere near there, bubbeleh,” he said stupidly, and Kravitz looked momentarily startled and then laughed.

He was smiling. “I’d be happy to try.”

 _This is how I die_ , Taako’s runner brain decided.

 _This is how I want to die,_ Taako’s Taako brain agreed.

He didn’t even really register moving his hand, just shuddered and gasped as Kravitz’ stroked and circled his asshole with the exploratory care of someone getting used to the controls of a new rig. As the moment stretched on, turning from preparatory into teasing, he started to protest, only to find Kravitz already looking back at him with an expectant but uncertain expression.

“What?” he asked. It came out closer to a snap than he liked.

Kravitz looked at him, eyes searching. “Do you… have lubricant? I wasn’t- things haven’t changed that much, have they?” he asked, sounding a little awkward.

All at once, Taako felt extremely stupid. “Uh,” he said, and then pushed Kravitz back enough to give himself room to roll onto his stomach and crawl towards the nightstand.

The sensation of Kravitz’ lips on the nape of his neck, of the length of his erection sliding against his ass- when he fumbled and dropped the lube back into the drawer, he tried to tell himself that it wasn’t some sort of karma for how much he’d needled and baited Brad.

Almost as soon as he’d gotten it again, Kravitz took the bottle from him, nosing at the delicate skin behind his ear. “Can I…?”

He’d been so swept up in the momentum of it all that he actually hadn’t given a single thought to the particulars of what was about to happen, and the reality that the events of the day had found him on his knees for this man, ready to take it raw from this very strange and criminally gorgeous reaper who called himself Kravitz, hit him like a backhand.

It was what he’d wanted from almost the first moment he’d laid eyes on Kravitz, but hadn’t even made the list of things he’d considered might actually happen.

And yet here they were, caught in a weird breathless tableau as Kravitz paused for confirmation, fingertip pressing but not penetrating.

His face suddenly felt very warm. His mouth was dry.

“Taako?” Kravitz murmured, inquisitive. His chest was pressed close. He wasn’t as cold as he’d been initially, but the lack of a heartbeat was still a little unnerving.

“Yeah, go for it,” Taako mumbled, only half-hearing himself over the rushing in his ears.

Kravitz was much gentler than he would’ve expected when they’d met, easing past the first knuckle carefully, free hand wandering up Taako’s spine, over his shoulder, into his hair.

Superficially, it was very sweet, and as he leaned into the hand in his hair, he wished he hadn’t clocked Kravitz as a decker. It made it impossible not to recognize that he was, for all intents and purposes, running diagnostics.  

Kravitz was checking his tension, testing to see if he’d flinch away or freeze up, trying to identify the presence of anything that could create complications. It probably wasn’t even a conscious behaviour.

He gasped and stifled a moan as Kravitz’ finger eased in past the second knuckle and felt Kravitz smile against his skin.

 _Pull my hair,_ he almost demanded, starting to speak and then changing his mind. Kravitz met his eyes as he looked back over his shoulder at him. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, faltering as Kravitz shifted the angle of his hand in a way that would’ve made Taako’s knees buckle if he hadn’t already been kneeling.

The way Kravitz hummed at that made him suspect his dismissiveness was having the opposite effect as intended. “What-” He stopped, nose wrinkled, and inhaled with an expression that suggested he found it very inconvenient. “What am I not worrying about?”

Taako shot him a sidelong look. “You’ll figure it out-” he started to say, and then collapsed from his hands to his elbows as Kravitz’ fingers scissored out, coaxing him open.

He wasn’t sure how Kravitz had managed to slip the second one in there entirely without him noticing, but there was no ignoring it as he cycled between spreading and stretching to curling and stroking, never focusing on one or the other long enough to push Taako too far into or out of his pleasure.

He had a thought, tried to say it, but all that came out was a weakly venomous,

“fuck! Fuck you-”

as he buried his hands in the sheets and tried arch back into those fingers, desperate for more.

Kravitz’ hand paused for just a moment before he let out a laugh that Taako felt more than heard. Before he could ask why, Kravitz turned his face and kissed him, swallowing his moans as he worked his fingers against something that made tears prickle behind Taako’s eyes for reasons he couldn’t quite understand.

“Are you ready?” Kravitz murmured. His eyes were intent as Taako nodded, but he didn’t move.

“Yuh- fucking- yeah-” Taako stumbled after a moment, “Krav-”

His fingers slipped out so smoothly it took him a second to comprehend why he felt so empty, and then something much larger pressed against him for a moment before breaching.

He knew he was making some sort of noise, but whether they were words or nonsense was utterly beyond him: Kravitz slid into him slowly and with a relish he could feel in the way his fingers pressed into his skin, in the windless sigh on the nape of his neck, in every vein and every inch as it entered him.

For a beat, they were both still and silent as Kravitz held him tightly, sheathed deeply in his ass, the folds of his robes pooling around them, and then he rolled his hips and Taako started to babble something, realizing halfway through that he had no idea at all what it was he’d been saying.

There was something luxuriant about the way Kravitz fucked him.

Gone was the urgency. It was almost reverent, the way he moved, like a man just enough recovered from the borders of starvation to have rediscovered the enjoyment of food.

It was, if Taako was being entirely real with himself, extremely goddamn weird, but he wasn’t really all that inclined to complain.

When Kravitz shifted and pulled him upright, chest still pressed to his back, he had to strangle a yelp: the change of position made him acutely aware of just how deep in his ass Kravitz really was.

Taako fumbled into a kneeling squat and took the opportunity to take control. Behind him, Kravitz stilled and made a soft, unearthly sound, hands guiding Taako’s hips as he rode him.

When his hand settled into Taako’s hair, paused as though he’d picked up on some tiny cue, and fisted into it and pulled, it was done. Taako came shaking and whining, one hand anchored on Kravitz’ thigh, the other fisted in his robe, utterly unable to speak for a solid minute afterwards.

Kravitz had gone still, but he could feel how unbelievably hard he still was.

Once he had recovered enough to do anything but languish against the chest behind him, he rolled his hips and clung to Kravitz steadily. “I wanna feel you come,” he murmured, hissing in a sharp breath at how sensitive he was.

There was a beat of silence and then Kraviitz buried his face in Taako’s throat. Taako waited.

“Uh-” he started to ask.

“I don’t- I’m not sure I can,” Kravitz admitted, voice a little tight. “I want to, but I… might not be able to anymore.” He said something very quiet that might’ve been a curse. “I should’ve listened during briefing.”

Taako processed that, brain still a little sluggish. “Still feels good, though, right?” he mused, rolling his hips again and squeaking when Kravitz grabbed him and held him still.

“Taako,” the voice in his ear said, rattling from somewhere deep in Kravitz’ chest, “you can’t- I’m not- don’t do that.”

Taako did it again. “Why not, homie?”

Kravitz’ arm tightened around him. “It’s already,” he murmured, lips brushing the shell of his ear, “really, really hard for me not to just… keep going. It’s- I’m trying to calm down.”

“Why?” he asked again, trying to wiggle teasingly only to discover that Kravitz was, despite his lean frame, strong enough to hold him entirely still. It was like trying to shift stone.

There was a long moment of silence, and then a shuddering inhale of breath. “I don’t think,” Kravitz said to the back of his neck, “you completely understand what I mean when I say I’m dead, Taako. I don’t get sick, and I don’t get tired- well. My body doesn’t get tired,” he amended. “It- I’m realizing now that… that’s something that could get, uh- it’s not great, is it? Hm.”

As he continued to mutter, Taako had the bizarre feeling that this wasn’t entirely directed towards him, that he was catching a glimpse of this man’s internal monologue: there was a sort of fretful, rambling particularity to it that felt very authentic.

He also recognized what Kravitz was saying. As much as he wanted to argue, the fact was that marathon sex was really only any good at all when everyone involved knew they were signing up for marathon sex. Going full-tilt and burning out early on made for an uncomfortable and unpleasant experience.

“Should I… get off?” he asked.

Another pause, then a sigh, a breath in. “Yeah,” Kravitz said. He sounded, Taako noticed, incredibly reluctant. “I have to find out if this is fixable.”

 _Straight to troubleshooting. Have you tried turning it off and on again?_ Taako thought suddenly. He bit back a laugh as he disentangled himself from Kravitz’ lap.

It was a process: Kravitz was in the unenviable position of a man whose body wasn’t entirely on board with the decision his mind had made, so while he didn’t prevent Taako from extricating himself, he also wasn’t helpful.

When Taako rolled over onto his back with a grunt, legs numb and nerves buzzing, Kravitz was looking at him with a lost expression. “Uhh. You good, homie?” he asked, casting around for something to wipe himself down with before realizing there was nothing.

Kravitz opened his mouth, but there was a delay before he spoke. “I-” he started. “I don’t… know what I’m supposed to do,” he said awkwardly, “right now. Am I supposed to leave, or-”

Taako laughed. “Hey, uh,” he interrupted, “cha boy’s gonna take a shower because he’s nasty. You wanna join him?”

Some of the tension in Kravitz’ face eased, but he still looked at little lost. “Do I- oh. Yeah. Okay.” Taako saw him register the mess of fluids as he looked down at himself. “Yeah, I could use a shower.”

Taako rolled to his feet, thighs a little shaky, and beckoned him to follow. “Cool. Maybe ditch the cloak for this one, though.”

He walked through the bedroom door, naked and tender and feeling the weight of Kravitz’ eyes on his back, and for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, he wasn’t thinking about anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've been writing this for a thousand years, i literally don't remember what my own notes were


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brad attends a company event. Kravitz sees a doctor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy new years motherfuckers roillin on into 2020 with a chapter that's just our poor boys having their lives ruined by taako's chaotic energy

In six years, he’d never missed a company event. He was a hobbyist brewer. People looked for him. For his beer.

His absence would’ve been glaringly obvious.

 _Still,_ he mused, nodding his way through an inaccessible conversation about the testing problems inherent to the newest prototypes being developed by the anti-arcane research team.

“So Brad, I was thinking-” someone said behind him. He had to force himself not to stiffen with surprise.

“Nice to see you were able to make it, Anvelino,” he acknowledged politely, turning. Anvelino clapped and gestured dismissively, manicured brown curls and waxed moustache bobbing as he spoke.

“A pleasure, a pleasure, as always,” he said breezily, “Brad. Brad: February? Hmm?” His hands and eyebrows were raised expectantly. His normally clipped accent was lilting, a sure sign he was toeing the line between tipsy and drunk.

“I’m not-” Brad started, and then sighed. “Maybe we can talk about this another time,” he protested, trying to edge his body between Anvelino and the group, to isolate the conversation.

“Diversity!” Anvelino crowed, swaying and clinking a champagne flute against his beer in an unprompted toast. “We need more diversity in our image- we need to reach out to underrepresented candidate groups, show them they’re welcome, say _come, join the Bureau, be successful!_ And what better way than to advertise the success people like them have already found here? Surely you can see-”

Behind Brad, his colleagues had start to snicker. He stifled a sigh. “It’s a noble cause, Anvelino, but I’m very busy,” he said as soon as he could get a word in. “I don’t- I just don’t have time to be in the promotional calender, I’m sorry.”

“It’s a one-day shoot,” Anvelino argued, then cut the air with a slicing motion. “Half-day? A half-day for you? I can make a half-day happen for our Mister February, hmm?” Out of the corner of his eye, Brad saw one of Anvelino’s colleagues from Public Relations drifting towards them with a weary-looking smile.

“I’ll let you know if my schedule opens up,” he lied politely, turning back to the conversation at hand and closing Anvelino out of the circle. Remi and Collandra from R&D were both obviously stifling laughter and hiding in their drinks, but his colleague from Interpersonal, Penny, was laughing openly.

“One of these years he’s going to get you, Brad,” she teased, smiling with a mouth full of strange blue synthetic teeth as she watched Anvelino’s colleague attempting to corral him towards the water station. “It’s only a matter of time.”

“Wait,” Remi interrupted, dribbling beer down the front of shirt in her haste, “is this- is this a thing?”

Before Brad could change the subject, Penny treated him to a wicked side-eye and continued. “Anve is convinced that Brad has that- what was it he called it, Brad? Do you remember?”

Brad groaned. “Please.” It was futile. He knew she was going to.

“That ‘Office Romance Fantasy’ quality,” she drawled, hitting every syllable like a target at a gun range. “God. He can preach civic duty and progress until the Seventh World, but nothing is ever going to convince me he’s not just trying to cash in on the very lucrative market that is people who fantasize about a hot ork fucking them over a desk.”

Remi had dissolved into hysterical laughter. Brad scrubbed a hand over his face, feeling his cheeks go hot. “That’s,” he said evenly, “not exactly the image I’m trying to cultivate in this company, but uh… thank you, Penny, for your… kind remarks, I guess.”

Collandra was looking at him with narrowed eyes. “Y’know? I can kinda see it,” she said. Remi, who’d nearly gotten herself under control, shrieked. “Hear me out: you’re big.”

Brad waited patiently.

Collandra gestured vaguely. “That’s it,” she said, and then also dissolved into laughter.

Beside him, Penny was cackling.

He sighed.

Staying in bed with Taako would’ve been a terrible idea.

 _Still_ , he thought. _Still._

***

Kravitz was very aware of his body.

He was very aware of the weight of his clothes, of the slight breeze from the vents against his skin, of the way the hard material of the chair he was sitting on creaked as he shifted.

To his left, a young woman was very pointedly reading her book. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her turn the page.

To his right, a pair of men were shooting him terrified glances and whispering amongst themselves.

The waiting room was filled with the tinny melody of a 2060s hit playing through the speaker of an old radio on the reception desk. A vid screen on the wall warned augmented matrix-users of the dangers of viral cyber-contagions before flashing to an advertisement for auxiliary security software.

 _This was a mistake_ , he thought, and then, _no, I have to do this._

A nurse cracked open the door separating the back end of the clinic from the waiting area.

“Mister, uh… Kravitz?” he called, eyes catching on and then moving politely over Kravitz as though there were any question as to who the reaper in the room was.

Kravitz heard the woman next to him exhale with relief as he rose and followed the nurse through the door. He could almost feel the tension follow him out of the room.

The nurse, to his credit, was very professional. “In here, please,” he said, indicating a door at the end of the hall. The lettering on its surface was different from the others, and so faded as to be nearly illegible. “Doctor Ito will be with you shortly.”

As the nurse closed the door behind him, he stood in the middle of the room, utterly at a loss. He knew, rationally, that the normal thing to do would be to sit down in the chair against the wall or on the edge of the examination table.

Instead, he stood there, staring down the pale green walls, the peppering of fliers and bulletins on the corkboard, the silvery examination tools and blinking diagnostic aids.

 **Have Questions About Your Vice?** one bulletin asked him. **Consult your supervisor for legal aid and information on risk mitigation!**

He had no idea how long he stood there, staring. He didn’t realize he’d been doing at all until someone knocked on the door behind him.

The woman who entered was not who he’d been expecting. The eyes were right, as was the curve of her chin, but her hair, nose, the set of her mouth: all wrong.

“Mister Kravitz?” she greeted, glancing from him to the tablet in her hand with a furrowed brow.

“Where’s Doctor Ito?” he asked, remembering to sit. The chair was uncomfortable.

The eyebrow unfurrowed, raised. “Oh,” she said quietly. There was a look of sympathy to her, now. “I’m sorry, my father passed away almost ten years ago.”

Kravitz wrinkled his nose. “No, I- where’s Doctor Himiko Ito?”

He watched her face go smooth with shock. “Oh. Well, that explains why I couldn’t find your file in our database,” she commented with the strange serenity of someone confronted with impossibility. “One moment, please.”

He felt oddly helpless as he watched her poke her head out the door and call down the hallway.

_“-scan and transfer my grandmother’s files- yeah, I know-”_

“Grandmother?” he asked her, disbelieving.

She looked over her shoulder at him with an unreadable expression. “Yes.” Her whole demeanor had shifted. He felt as thought he was being studied like some sort of strange insect. “You can’t have been here in at least sixty-five or seventy years, Mister Kravitz.”

_It can’t have been-_

It was. The more he thought about it, the more he realized it was true.

“…It’s just Kravitz. I lost track of time,” he said. His own voice sounded embarrassingly plaintive to his ears.

“I’m, uh,” she said carefully, “told that can be an issue for some of the employees of the Blackwing Conglomerate. What can I do for you, Kravitz?”

His mind went blank. “Uh.”

She waited, seemingly endlessly patient.

“Uh, I-” he tried. “Um. Hmm.”

“Is it… a problem with your physical form?” she prompted gently. “I see here that you’ve indicated it has something to do with your Vice, but didn’t provide any further details.”

“Yes,” Kravitz confirmed. “Yeah. Um.”

She continued to wait, obviously expecting him to elaborate.

“Okay,” she said finally. “Uh… can you give me a basic description of your Vice and how this problem is affecting you?”

Kravitz had no idea what his face was doing in that moment, but whatever it was, it almost made the younger Doctor Ito laugh. “Uhhh,” he started. “It’s, uh. Sexual in nature?” Saying it felt like a confession, like he was relinquishing all deniability. “I guess.”

Her eyebrows rose, but only for the briefest moment. “Okay,” she said. “Not unusual, from what I understand. Is it voyeuristic or exhibitionistic? Does it fall into the realm of sadomasochism or domination and submission? What variant of sexual behaviour would you classify it as belonging to?”

“None?” he said, and her eyebrow furrowed again. “Just… the usual one?”

“The usual one?” she echoed. Her tablet made a small sound and she looked down at it, squinting at something.

“It’s just… sex,” he clarified.

She looked at her tablet, then at him, and then at her tablet again. “Forgive me for asking, but is this a prank?” she asked, and then her lips thinned. “Okay. I can tell from your expression it’s not.” Silence yawned between them as she read something, squinting down at the screen of her tablet with a strange expression. “Kravitz, it says here that your first and last visit to this clinic was ninety-seven years ago.”

He thought about it. “Yes.”

Her lips parted. Closed. Parted again. “What is the nature of your concern?”

“Uh,” he mumbled. “I… ejaculatory?”

He wasn’t sure how to feel about the absence of surprise in her eyes. “If I’m reading this correctly, you expressed to my grandmother,” she commented, “that you did not feel an ongoing dialogue about your sexual health was necessary. Is that correct?”

 _This was a mistake_ , he thought. “Yes.”

When she next spoke, it was with the deliberate care of something picking a path through a minefield. “Am I… am I mistaken in assuming that means you have… not been engaging in any sexual activity, with or without a partner or partners, until recently?” She really was very good at masking her emotions with professionalism, he noticed.

“Yes. I mean, no,” he said. “You’re not mistaken, no.”

She sat back in her chair heavily, amusement seeping through her crisp façade. “Well,” she said, “the good news is this: unlike a digestive lapse, there’s very little chance of this being permanent, and once you’ve overcome the initial-” Her pause was a little too long. “-blockage you, uh, shouldn’t have too much trouble going forward. I hope you’ll excuse my being a little crude here, but ninety-seven years is a long time to go without ejaculating. I would imagine you’re a little backed up. It’ll probably take some sustained effort to, um-” She treated him to a wry little smile. “-clear the pipes, as it were.”

“Okay,” he said.

As he went to stand, she raised a hand. “I can tell this is all very new to you, so the potentially bad news is,” she interrupted, “because you indicated on your paperwork that this is an issue relating to your Vice, I will have to submit the contents of this meeting to your official file.”

Kravitz stared at her, horrified.

She gave him a sympathetic little smile. “Your medical coverage is subsidized by your employer, Kravitz. I’ll tell you what,” she murmured, “I’m not going to submit my files until the end of the work day, so if you… wanted to have a chance to discuss this with your superior before it’s submitted, that should be very doable.”

“Thank you,” he said stiffly.

“You will have to tell them, I’m sorry. Grounding Vices have to be divulged in compliance with your employment contract,” she told him, pausing for a moment to scrutinize his expression. “I wouldn’t worry too much. I’m sure it won’t be that bad. If I’m being honest, yours is probably the lowest-complication Vice I’ve ever encountered. I’m sure they’ll just be happy to have one so simple for a change,” she said comfortingly.

He gave her a terrified little rictus of a smile.

***

He was supposed to have grown out of this.

He wasn’t a teenager anymore. He knew better.

And yet, when his comm screen had lit up and he’d seen the words on the screen-

**soo when’s next time**

-his mood had buoyed as intensely as if someone had dosed him with a euphoric. He was instantly giddy, instantly stupid, instantly dismayed at his own reaction.

He stared down at the photograph in his hand, willing it to ground him like it was supposed to, willing his mind to stop fixating on the light that blinked in the periphery of his vision.

Blink. Blink. Blink.

A black-haired ork woman, muscular and broad-shouldered and grinning, and beside her, a smaller human man in a baseball cap with the smiling eyes of someone with no complaints worth voicing.

Between them, a young man of fifteen, already taller than his father, nearly as tall his mother, arms slung around both their shoulders, his mouth curled in an unworried smile, in a smile that said he’d never known what it was to worry and did not expect to learn.

A teenager, square-jawed and cheerful, thick black hair spilling loose over his shoulders and chest. Still vain enough to bother wearing contact lenses. Still vain enough to go through the tedious ritual of detangling his long hair at the end of every day instead of tying it back. Human, at a glance.

Blink. Blink. Blink.

He didn’t have to look at the next photo to know its contents intimately: the parents, unchanged, and between them, a young man of sixteen, now also taller than his mother, smiling awkwardly without teeth as though that could hide what had happening to them.

Blink. Blink. Blink.

He grabbed his comm and turned it over before scrubbing a hand over his face, feeling the subtle tells of his skeletal structure, the more obvious protrusion of his teeth.

He remembered that year, about the years that had followed it without really having to think about them: remembered the surprise of his teachers, the murmurs of, _“isn’t he a little old to…?”_ that followed him out of the classrooms; remembered the flirtatious admiration of his classmates turning to something a little warier, as though his changing body had somehow changed his mind; remembered Marley and Onstance and the way their clumsily experimental three-part relationship had slowly shifted to exclude him; remembered the exact moment he’d realized his plans for the future had turned to dust in his hands.

A human, approachable and charismatic, could rely on being listened to.

An ork, no matter how uncontroversial and unambitious and unthreatening he could make himself appear, had to tread much more carefully.

He thought about Talazerus, about Mynthe the Mantis, about Taako, and for one welcome moment, bitterly resented him.

And then he thought about Taako again- about the soft, cool weight of him in his lap, about his smile, about his voice, about the way those nails had dug into his arm as he shuddered with pleasure, about the way he’d clenched tight around him just before he’d come, about the way he smelled, tasted, moved- and it was gone, replaced by that same giddy boyish stupidity again, alongside a mounting anxiety that if he didn’t answer soon, he’d lose the option to.

He turned the comm back over.

Blink. Blink. Blink.

He was supposed to have grown out of this. He was too old to be developing a schoolboy crush on a pretty elf, no matter how beautiful and fascinating.

 **When are you free?** he typed, careful to keep it neutral, to resist the urge to mention he was free the rest of the weekend, until work on Monday. _Keep it steady, Brad_.

He expected, instinctively, to have to wait for a reply. Instead, the reply came quickly, as he was still tidying away his nostalgia.

**uhh i’m an unemployed squatter, let me consult my fuckin busy shcedule**  
**what do you know, taako’s pretty free**  
**hbu think you can pencil me in?**

_Stop it_ , he told himself, but he could already feel himself smiling like a fool. 

He knew, rationally, that it’d hurt when it all fell apart, but in the moment, the prospect didn’t really bother him.

***

Lana was sitting at her desk, oiling her weapon and idly scrolling through feeds when he found her. He considered himself lucky to catch her in her cube, for once.

“Lana,” he greeted, rapping his knuckles on the wall. She jumped, nearly knocking the blade oil off her desk, and looked over her shoulder at him with wide eyes.

“Fuck! Kravitz?” When she turned to face him, leaving the shine pot open dangerously close to her keyboard, his fingers itched to close it. “What can I do you for, boss?”

Kravitz frowned at her. “I’m not your superior-” he started to protest, and then shook his head. “Um. How’s your evening going?” he asked awkwardly. She raised an eyebrow at him and said nothing, moving subtly as though to turn back to her desk. “Uh, who do I talk to about registering a Vice?”

That caught her attention. Her dark eyes blazed with interest as she leaned forward in her chair. “A Vice?” she parroted. “You found your Vice? What is it? Come on, don’t hold out on me-”

Kravitz tried not to flinch at how close her elbow came to hitting the open shine pot. “I’d prefer to talk to whoever’s in charge of that about it,” he deflected.

Her eyes narrowed. “It’s definitely not violent,” she mused, “and I feel like you would’ve found it already if it was consumption-based.”

He frowned again. “Do you really have to speculate-”

“We’re immortal and I’m nosy,” she interrupted flippantly, resting her chin in her hand and smearing her cheek with blade oil. “Why are you so ‘vasive? What, did you finally try sex?” She said it with the mischievous smile of someone sharing an inside joke with a friend.

Whatever it was his face did in that moment, it wasn’t what she’d expected.

Her smile faded and her eyes went wide. “Wait-”

He looked away and said nothing. The wall of her cube was plastered with photographs of her and someone who looked familiar. He couldn’t quite put a name to the face.

“Wait,” she said again, “are you- is it actually sex?”

He crossed her arms over his chest, realized that looked defensive, and busied himself straightening the hood of his robe, instead. “Who do I talk to?” he repeated.

“Oh my god,” she muttered, “it is, isn’t it?” She sounded delighted.

He wished, in that moment, that he was living: he had a faint sense memory of, in moments like this one, feeling heat rush to just below the surface of his skin, of being insulated from sound and sight by a strange sense of distance.

He was not living, so instead, he stared at her photos and kept his mouth firmly shut. He’d crossed his arms over his chest again. He wasn’t sure when that had happened.

Behind him, someone had poked their head into the cube to investigate. He could feel their proximity. “What’s going on?” they asked in a faintly accented voice.

 _Ruriko_ , he thought, and then, _oh god, not Ruriko._

“Kravitz found his Vice!” Lana told her excitedly, launching into her speculations.

Kravitz, for his part, remained still and silent, as though that would somehow render him invisible if he kept at it with enough patience.

***

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> C:/shadowrunfacts.exe/
> 
> > okay so here's the thing about brad's history: ya kid nah misunderstood the concept of goblinization when first introduced to it but it's honestly way more interesting to imagine a universe in which secondary methahuman traits can express during puberty.  
> > i do what i want


End file.
